Richard’s hand had flown to his dagger, and Geoffrey, equally outraged, sprang to comfort their mother. Henry glared at Richard.
“I am your king, and your father, to whom you owe all honor and obedience,” he said menacingly. “Lift one finger in anger against me and you commit treason, which I will punish accordingly, whether you be my son or no.”
“You hit my Lady Mother,” Richard replied through gritted teeth. “You are no father of mine.” And, leaving Henry glowering and muttering threats, he helped Geoffrey assist Eleanor to her bower, where her horrified damsels ministered to her wounds.
“There is no moving Father,” Richard said dejectedly.
It pained Eleanor to speak, and the pain in her heart was greater still—Henry had raised his hand to her; she still could not believe it—but she forced herself to clarify things for her boys. “There is more to this than his obduracy,” she mumbled through her cut lip. “He cannot see or comprehend what is happening right under his nose. He sees his word as law and expects it to be obeyed.” She sighed, fighting back tears. She must remain strong, for no one else would champion her sons’ cause.
“You are aware that your father and I have lived apart for some time,” she said gently. “That was our mutual decision. We had had our differences, yet we remained friends and allies. Today, that has all changed, for I will not have my children cheated of their rights. Plainly, we are in one camp, and your father is in another. That makes us enemies, although it grieves me to say it. But I promise you now, all of you, including Young Henry, that I will fight for your rights, and I will make the King see sense!”
“Will there be a war?” Geoffrey asked eagerly. He was desperate to prove himself in battle. But Richard’s face remained grave; a year older, he had realized the true implications of the rift. Eleanor could guess what he was thinking—they were that close.
“Your father said that a kingdom divided would be brought to desolation,” she mused. “Well, he has this day divided his kingdom, and if it all ends in desolation, he must bear the responsibility. By his stubbornness, he has laid himself open to the thing he most dreads. But I will not let it happen; there is too much at stake, for he is putting this empire we have built at risk. I have always been a true, loyal wife and helpmeet to my lord, but I will not stand by and see my sons treated unjustly. He is wrong, utterly wrong, and we must make him face that.”
Then her voice turned wistful, less strident. “This saddens me more than I can say. There should not be discord between father and son, or husband and wife. It is against the natural order of things.”
“What wonder if we lack the natural affections of mankind?” Richard laughed humorlessly. “We are from the Devil, and must needs go back to the Devil!”
What could she do to force Henry to his senses? Dare she write to Louis? It had been so long. Yet something told her that he would welcome her intervention. There was no doubt he was of the same mind, although for different motives. She wanted justice for her sons, and for them to enjoy their right to a share of their father’s power; Louis wanted Henry’s empire disunited. He too had evidently read the Scriptures.
But what exactly did the Young King want? Was it sovereign authority, even if that meant the overthrow of his father? If so, then what she was contemplating was dangerous in the extreme. At its best it was rebellion—at its worst, treason.
She must talk to her oldest son as soon as she could and find out what was in his mind. If it were indeed Henry’s ruin, then she must try to talk some sense into the Young King. In the meantime—it could not hurt, surely—she would write to Louis, parent-to-parent, as it were, and confide to him her concerns. One word from him, threatening the peace that Henry had worked so hard to negotiate, might be all it would take …
And there was another thing. Louis was her overlord; she had every right to appeal to him for aid against her enemies. And, by his insupportable acts, Henry had now made himself her enemy. She herself had not created this terrible situation. She had been trying all along to find a peaceable solution.
Putting quill to parchment, she found her thoughts drifting hopefully back through the years to a young man with long yellow hair who had been so pathetically eager to please her …
Limoges, 1173
When Eleanor next saw Henry, he made no reference to what had passed between them; nor did he refer again to the rift with his sons. Yet he could not have failed to notice the frigidity of her manner toward him, or that she shrank from his touch. It seemed he no longer cared what she thought of him.
His striking her had changed everything. There was nothing unusual in a husband beating his wife, of course: it was a man’s right, and she knew of many women who had to endure such chastisement. She also knew of several churchmen who wanted to limit the length of the rod that was used, but they had been dismissed as eccentrics. No, the issue here was that, in lashing out and wounding her, Henry had brutally demonstrated that his respect for her, and his love and regard, had died—and he had let her sons see that.
And something had died in her too. She could no longer bear to be in his presence.
He had insisted on her traveling south with him to Limoges, where he was to host a week of lavish banquets and festivities in honor of the betrothal of the Lord John to Alice of Maurienne. The guests of honor were to be Alice’s father, Count Humbert, the Kings of Aragon and Navarre, and the Count of Toulouse. Richard was to be present, as Duke of Aquitaine, and Henry had summoned the Young King from Hautfort; Geoffrey he had sent back to Brittany. Divide and rule, Eleanor thought cynically.
And that was how the great baggage train of the Plantagenets came once more to be wending its cumbersome way south through the Angevin territories. It was February, and cold, when they left Chinon, but Limoges, when they arrived, was mild, and the town was en fête. Although her heart was frozen, Eleanor mentally girded her loins and donned her most sociable mask, conducting herself as charmingly and wittily as ever toward her august guests. She warmed to the flattery of the Spanish kings, and reveled in the blatant regard of the black-haired Count Raymond of Toulouse, with whom, many years earlier, she and Henry had once been at war, each claiming that Toulouse belonged to them. Although Raymond had won the day, it seemed that he cherished no hard feelings toward his former aggressor. She wickedly hoped that Henry had seen him flirting outrageously with her. At fifty-one, it was balm to her broken heart and scarred lips to luxuriate once more in a man’s frank interest.
“I had never believed the reports of your beauty until I met a man called Bernard de Ventadour,” Raymond told her as they sat at the high table, dining off gold plates and drinking from crystal goblets. “He was a troubadour—you may remember him.”
“I knew him. He was once at my court,” she told him.
“He loved you, truly. Your husband the King had dismissed him through jealousy, and he sought refuge at my court. He pined for you so greatly; did you know that?” Raymond’s startling blue eyes, set in an angular, handsome face, were searching.
“I knew he had a regard for me,” Eleanor said. “But, although I say it myself, all the troubadours claimed to be in love with me. I was the duchess, and it was more or less expected of them.”