“It’s your decision,” he said again, turning back to his handiwork. “You’re the one who has to bear the children. Whether I care or not is beside the point.”
“Are you accusing me of deliberately ignoring your needs?” Eleanor cried, forgetting her resolve to maintain a gentle and dignified detachment.
“I’m saying I don’t need this at this time!” Henry snarled. “I’ve got Thomas threatening to excommunicate me and proclaiming to the whole of Christendom that my Constitutions of Clarendon are unlawful. There’s trouble in Brittany, where my vassal, Count Conan, is unable to keep order, and your Aquitainian lords are up to their usual tricks. I’m not feeling well, Eleanor, in fact I’m feeling bloody awful, and you choose this moment to tell me you don’t want to sleep with me anymore!”
Relief flooded through her. He was ill. That explained much. Maybe things were not so bad after all. Then the implications of his being ill hit her like a blow.
“You are ill?” she echoed. “Why didn’t you tell me, Henry? What is wrong?”
“I feel sick to my bones,” Henry said, glad to be able to offer Eleanor an explanation—albeit a temporary one—for his coolness toward her; he could never have admitted that he no longer loved her as he had, that there was a new love in his life now. Overburdened by cares as he was, the sweet image of Rosamund remained with him constantly, his longing for her a continual ache in his loins. If that was a sickness, then yes, he was ill. But there was more to it than that.
Thomas was threatening him with anathema. Flippant as Henry could be in regard to religion, he still feared eternal damnation, and of being cast out from the communion of the Church. Where would that leave him as a ruler who held dominion over all the territories from Scotland to Aquitaine? When a man was excommunicated, all Christians were bound to shun him; he could not receive the Blessed Sacrament, or any of the consolations of his faith. He would be as a leper.
He knew, though, that it was forbidden to excommunicate a man who was sick. The Church, in her wisdom and mercy, held that the sick were weak in judgment and incapable of rational thought. It would make good sense, therefore—for so many reasons—to take to his bed and feign illness.
So he took to his bed, and had it given out that he was laid low by a mysterious malady. He even fooled his doctors, groaning and rolling his eyes in mock pain as they approached. A mystery illness indeed, they agreed, conferring privately among themselves. Had they not seen the King in such evident discomfort they would have said there was nothing wrong with him.
Eleanor was at her wits’ end. Henry had not thought fit to take her into his confidence, so she was terrified of him dying, and distraught at the doctors’ failure to cure him. When she came to sit beside him, he affected to be all but comatose, suffering her ministrations in silence and wishing she would go away. Nothing further had been said by either of them on the subject of their quarrel: the issue remained unresolved, although, a thousand times each day, Eleanor crucified herself for what she had said. She made bargains with God; she demanded that He heal Henry; and when He had done that, she beseeched Him to make things right between them. Daily, on her knees, she nagged, pleaded with, and bullied Him as if He were one of her subjects.
Henry had lain abed for two months, and Eleanor was beginning to lose all hope of his recovery, and to worry if Young Henry was ready for the heavy task of ruling the empire, when news came from Vézelay.
“Becket has excommunicated all those who formulated the Constitutions of Clarendon,” announced the Empress, who, frail as she was, had traveled from Rouen to be with her ailing son. Wearily, she climbed the stairs to the Queen’s bower to convey the latest tidings to her exhausted daughter-in-law.
Eleanor swayed. It had come, this news they had all dreaded, the fear of which—she had begun to suspect—was one of the causes of Henry’s malady.
“Sit down, Eleanor!” the Empress commanded. “You must think of the child you carry, and take comfort from the fact that Henry is not included with the rest, on account of his illness. Even Becket did not dare to go so far.”
“Thanks be to God,” Eleanor breathed fervently, collapsing onto a stool with relief. “We must tell Henry at once.”
They found him propped up on his pillows, partaking of a little pottage. When they told him the news, his face contorted and he wept in such rage that they both feared he might suffer a relapse.
“The bastard! I will have him. I will ruin him! He will not defy me again, I swear it, by the eyes of God!” And then he fairly leaped out of bed, this invalid who had been almost at death’s door, with all trace of his illness gone. His wife and his mother looked at each other in astonished incomprehension. Then, as Henry shouted for water to wash in and clean clothes to put on, realization dawned—and, for Eleanor, the bitter understanding that he had not been ill at all, but carried on this long-drawn-out charade without a word in her ear; that he had let her suffer prolonged anguish and fear, and not thought to alleviate her misery. How, she wondered bitterly, could things ever be right between them after this?
Henry was still yelling his head off, heedless of his mother’s admonishments.
“My son, you must have a care to your health!” she enjoined him.
“There’s nothing wrong with my health!” he retorted, then his furious eyes met Eleanor’s appalled ones, and he had the grace to look guilty. But the moment was fleeting.
“I will write to the Pope, and to Frederick Barbarossa,” he vowed. “I will demand that the excommunications be revoked.”
“I have no doubt His Holiness will comply,” the Empress said. “He needs your support, and the Emperor Frederick’s. I, for my part, intend to write to Becket and give him a piece of my mind for showing such base ingratitude for all the favors you have showered upon him.”
“Thank you, Mother. Someone needs to make my Lord Archbishop see sense.”
“I shall warn him,” Matilda went on determinedly, “that his only hope of regaining your favor lies in humbling himself and moderating his behavior. I shall go and write the letter now, so that he may see how angry I am. And, my son, I rejoice to see you restored to health. Your recovery is no less than miraculous.” Her tone was sardonic.
When she was gone, and the sound of her footsteps had faded down the stairwell, Henry looked again at Eleanor, who had said not a word.
“I couldn’t tell either of you,” he explained. “You had to believe I was ill, so that others would be convinced.”
“You think I can’t act as well as you?” she answered in an icy tone. “You don’t know the half of it!”
Henry raised one eyebrow questioningly, but did not rise to the bait. He could not be troubled with confrontations with Eleanor at this time; his mind was busy elsewhere.
“I will have that priest!” he seethed. “I will crush him to the ground.”
Rennes, 1166
Eleanor was present in the cathedral of Rennes when Henry formally took possession of Brittany, having deposed his ineffectual vassal, Count Conan. It was a triumphant day, coming as it did so soon after the Pope had ordered Becket to annul his sentences of excommunication and molest his king no more.
With Henry formally invested with the insignia of the newly created Duchy of Brittany, the Archbishop now sealed the betrothal of eight-year-old Geoffrey to Conan’s daughter Constance, a proud little lady of five. Try as she might, Eleanor could not take to this blond-haired madame, with her pixie face, winged eyebrows, and posturing, imperious manner. She had been spoiled and allowed her head, and Eleanor feared that Geoffrey would have his work cut out to control her in the years to come, unless she, Eleanor, took steps to discipline the little minx. And that she would do, she promised herself. Constance could have her moment today, but after that she must be taken in hand.