Poitiers, 1173

Young Henry had escaped! Eleanor shook—she knew not with joy or fear—when she heard the news. He had endured his father’s vigilance as far as Chinon, clearly aware that he would soon be breaking free of it. Then he had stolen out of the bedchamber that Henry insisted they share, bribed the guards to lower the drawbridge, and ridden for Paris as if the four horsemen of the Apocalypse were at his heels. In vain did Henry send men in pursuit, and soon it dawned on him that his son’s flight had been planned down to the last detail, no doubt with the secret connivance of King Louis.

One day, and that not far distant, she knew that men would point the finger at her, accusing her of being Young Henry’s accomplice, yet she was as astonished at his escape as the rest of the world, and holding her breath to see what would come of it. She could not but rejoice that he had escaped his father’s repressive vigilance, which had become so destructive, and prayed that Henry would now see sense. She had lost all patience with him.

She sent relays of messengers secretly to Paris. She had to know what was happening. They brought back momentous news.

“Lady, King Louis and the Young King have pledged themselves to aid each other against their common enemy.” That could only be Henry, she realized, although the sweating man on his knees before her had not dared to say so.

“Lady, the King has sent a deputation of bishops to Paris to ask the King of France to return his son. When King Louis asked, ‘Who sends this message?’ he was told it was the King of England. ‘The King of England is here!’ the French King said. ‘But if you refer to his father, know that he is no longer King. All the world knows that he resigned his kingdom to his son.’” Eleanor could not resist a smile at that; she had not known that Louis had it in him to throw down the gauntlet in this manner.

“Lady, the Lord King is preparing for war; he is looking to the safety of his castles and his person. Many of the barons of England and Normandy have taken the Young King’s part and declared for him!”

This was becoming serious.

“What of William Marshal?” Eleanor inquired. That wise man of integrity: how would he view all this?

“He is for the Young King.”

War! Eleanor could not believe that things had gone this far. Louis was making threats, Henry’s barons were rallying to arms, and his sons were chomping at the bit to teach him a lesson. And suddenly, with the malevolent Bertran de Born at his side, the Young King materialized in Poitiers, hurriedly embracing his mother.

“I am come in secret,” he told her. “I need your aid, and that of my brothers.”

“Tell me truly, my son,” Eleanor asked seriously, “what you hope to gain from taking up arms against your father.”

“I thought you supported me!” he flared.

“I do; I believe you have a just grievance. But we all need to be clear what the objective is. Do you intend to force the King to share his power with you, or do you mean—as report has suggested—to overthrow him and rule in his stead?”

“Would it make a difference to your supporting me?” Ah, she thought, so he does understand the moral issue at stake.

“It might have done once,” she said bitterly, “but your father has since forfeited all right to my loyalty. I am as a widow; he has insulted and abandoned me, and he has treated you, his sons and mine, with contempt—and I will not stand by and allow it. A rotten branch must be cut off before it infects the healthy tree.”

“You are prepared to go that far?” Young Henry was staring at her in amazement.

“Yes,” she told him. “Your father has forced me to make a choice between my loyalty to my husband and king, and my desire to protect the interests of my children. I am a mother. There can be no contest. Whatever love and duty he once had from me, as of right, he has killed, stone dead.” She stepped forward and hugged her tall son.

“What has he done to you?” he asked angrily.

“He struck me, that you know. I do not care to go into the rest.”

“You do not need to,” the Young King fumed. “None of us are blind. We know about the FairRosamund.” The words were spat out with a sneer.

“It seems I was the only one who didn’t,” Eleanor said lightly. “But now we must forget about all that, and discuss this war with your brothers.”

She summoned Richard and Geoffrey to her solar. Constance arrived too, full of her own opinions, but Eleanor shooed her away impatiently. She did not want the silly girl meddling where she had no business to. The Young King’s brothers were surprised to see him, and listened gravely, and in mounting fury, to what he and their mother had to say.

“It is up to you what you do,” Eleanor told them both. “You are almost grown to man’s estate, and I will not treat you like children.”

Richard got up and embraced Young Henry. “I choose to follow my brother rather than my father, because I believe he has right on his side.”

“Well said!” Eleanor applauded. “And you, Geoffrey, will you join with your brothers against your father the King?”

Geoffrey drew himself up to his full height; at fifteen, he was undergoing a growth spurt, but he would never be as tall as Young Henry and Richard, of whom he was intensely jealous. Unlike them, he was dark and saturnine in appearance, and it was rapidly becoming evident that he had a character to match. He was clever with words, perhaps the most intelligent of all Eleanor’s brood, but untrustworthy and ruthlessly ambitious.

“Naturally, I support my brother,” he said smoothly. “I too am a victim of our father’s pigheadedness. I should be ruling Brittany without his endless interference.”

“Then we are of one accord,” Eleanor declared. “Yet before we go ahead and make plans, I must ask of you all if you are aware of the implications of what you are doing, for you must go into this with your eyes open. By anyone’s reckoning, it is treason.”

“Treason,” interrupted Young Henry hotly, “is a crime against the King. I am the King, am I not? Even my father cannot dispute that. And King Louis says that, in making me King, he abdicated all sovereign authority.”

“That last is open to dispute,” Eleanor said, “but it will serve for now. You do realize you are effectively declaring war on your own father, to whom you owe love and obedience?”

Geoffrey shrugged.

“Do you not know it is our proper nature that none of us should love the other? We came from the Devil, remember? So it is not surprising that we try to injure one another!”

“Our father has forfeited his right to our love and obedience,” Richard averred, his handsome face creased in resentment.

“Aye, indeed!” the Young King agreed. “So you are both for me in this?”

“Yes!” the brothers chorused.

“You must go directly to Paris, to King Louis,” Eleanor urged them. “He is your greatest ally, and will back you with military force. I will give you letters informing him and his council of my support. I will dictate them now, while you make ready.”

Within an hour she was in the palace courtyard, kissing her sons farewell and wishing them Godspeed, wondering if she would ever see them again. Their departure was supposed to be a secret, but within hours word of it, and excited speculation as to their purpose, had spread throughout the city of Poitiers, and within a week the whole province of Aquitaine was in jubilation at the prospect of an end to the rule of the hated Duke Henry. Eleanor only became truly aware of this when a troubadour, Richard le Poitevin, visited her court and played before her and her company. His words, sung in a rich baritone voice, conveyed just how strongly her subjects really felt: Rejoice, O Aquitaine!