The Secret Eleanor (16 page)

She wished she had not asked. Her heart felt shrunken. She felt like nothing, again, somehow. She reminded herself that all those words were only puffs of wind. Only deeds and consequences made the difference. That moment when she had heard, “Come home.” She had to learn how to do that. She held out her arms for the dress, to help Alys fold it for the progress.

Some days later, they left Paris, for what Eleanor hoped would be her last departure from it.

It took the whole day for the progress to start. The court moved in batches out of the city in a vast train: people great and little, many riding but most on foot, and wagons piled with their baggage, horses and mules in harness, braces of greyhounds and alaunts, running hounds in packs, the silent dewlapped lymers with their long dangling ears, hawks in baskets and on the fist, the cooks and the grooms, the laundry women and the kitchen girls, and all kinds of hangers-on.

The King rode first, with his great men and knights, leaving the city in a fuss of his banners and heralds and trumpeters. Eleanor followed well behind, to stay out of the dust of his passage.

She intended to be in his presence as little as possible. Under the loose gown, her belly was beginning to swell, and that morning, for the first time, she thought she had felt something inside there squirming around. She wanted no chance of inspiring the slightest suspicion.

De Rançun and his men ranged along around her, their horses dancing and tossing their heads. Her own horse wore skirts of fringed silk that rippled with every stride. One knight carried her banner, green and gold, and pages and servants and the people of her court followed after her in a great drove. In the fields of the Beauce, just south of the Seine, women out gleaning the last of the wheat crop straightened to watch her go by, shading their eyes from the sun, and their half-naked children came running to the side of the road.

Most of her waiting women sat tamely in a wagon, chattering and passing a cup, but Petronilla rode with her, and de Rançun carried Eleanor’s hooded falcon on his fist. They watched the stubbled fields for quarry for it, but there was none. Likely Louis’s passage earlier had frightened everything off. In a basket on the back of a mule, the sparrow hawk screeched indignantly at the jostling.

The season had turned toward winter, and even the sunlight had a cool edge to it. Yet the day was clear and brilliant, and Eleanor exhilarated at being out of the city, out of the close tower room, and going somewhere, anywhere, else.

As they passed down through the broad wheatlands south of Paris, the Queen looked ahead and saw the great winding stream of the progress and, twisting in her saddle, could look back and see it stretching far behind her, a river carrying her away to her home.

At that thought her spirit soared, and she lingered in the notion, the river taking her home again. It might be a long, crooked stream, but in the end she would be where she wanted.

Of course, everybody at the beginning was in high spirits. When they first set off, people joked and sang, wandered off to make water or just sit down for a while, ran up and down the road carrying messages and calling to their friends. Later, she knew, they would trudge along like whipped slaves, wanting only to stop. But now everybody was eager, even the horses and the hunting dogs, straining at their leashes.

Her horse snorted and pushed against the bit, and she let him break into a little jog trot, frisking off his excitement. She had just received him as a gift from a Spanish count. A splendid Barbary horse with a mane like silk, his hide all dappled gray, he was too mettlesome to ride aside, which suited her very well. Petronilla trotted along after her on her mild little brown mare, both legs neatly tucked together on the left front of the saddle, but Eleanor held her horse between her knees, and bent him to her will.

Late in the day they let the fierce little sparrow hawk fly at hares, in the meadows along the road. Almost at once the hawk took a great fat buck twice her size. It seemed to Eleanor a perfect omen. Soon, she thought, she would be safe in Poitiers, where she alone ruled. There in dark and quiet she would bear the little worm inside, and then she would send for Duke Henry and come into her great new kingdom.

When she thought of him her body grew warm and taut, and she remembered his passionate mouth, his muscular chest with its mat of thick curly red hair, his thighs like columns, the sword between them that fit her scabbard so well. His passion for her. She loved being loved. She caught Petronilla watching her with a little smirk on her face, and realized her sister knew exactly what was in her mind. When she met Petronilla’s eyes, though, her sister looked quickly away.

Lately Petronilla had been fretful, sometimes, perhaps brooding over Thierry’s harsh treatment of her. Eleanor wished she would put it aside; she liked her sister blithe.

The road swung west, toward Anjou. The King, half a day’s ride ahead of them, would make a show of strength along the border with his fractious vassals there. Eleanor hung back, to have the excuse of staying somewhere else, and sent Joffre de Rançun on ahead to find a suitable place. Briefly, she wondered what Duke Henry was doing. His lands bordered theirs; he could be only a few days away.

NORMANDY
SEPTEMBER 1151

 

 

 

After their father was dead, and the will read, and the old man buried in Le Mans, Geoffrey d’Anjou went south to his new castle at Chinon. Henry rode up to Lisieux to meet the council of his loyal barons.

On Saint John’s Day, he stood in the hall, and the room stretched away from him in a wide and empty swath of space. Not a single one of his barons had answered his summons.

After a moment the door opened and his knight Robert walked in, with Reynard just behind him. Robert crossed the empty room toward him while Reynard stood by the door, waiting.

Henry said, “Well.” He was so angry he could not force out any more words.

“My lord,” Robert said, “We have forty knights and thirty sergeants.”

“That will have to do,” Henry said, and ground his teeth together. He took his cap, and went to meet Robert, and took them right away back down toward southern Anjou.

His father had given his brother three castles: Chinon, Loudon, and Mirebeau, along the southern march of Anjou. He came to Chinon first.

The position was magnificent, a broad flat-topped rock high above a river winding to the Loire. The green country around it was just yielding up its harvest: the fields full of wagons, horses tethered in the wasteland, people with scythes moving through the standing corn. In the middle of it stood Chinon.

Henry loved the rock at once. Its stacked heights commanded the whole river valley and, recognizing this in ancient times, the Romans had built walls on it. Those walls were long crumbled, and such fortifications as the old ones had made were gone, but Henry’s father had raised a wooden tower on the peak that overlooked the whole valley.

Chinon was too beautiful and too well-placed therefore to leave in Geoffrey’s hands. Henry studied the tower a moment; if he burned that tower, Geoffrey would have nowhere to hide. He turned to Robert.

“Get them making torches,” he said. “We’ll attack at sundown.”

So he burned his brother out and chased him down the river south. As Geoffrey escaped, many of his men surrendered, as the custom was, and became Henry’s men instead, which got them fed and led well and, most important, on the winning side. In the morning, Henry stood on the smoldering peak of the rock above the river as these men came before him and swore themselves into his service.

The wind blew hard up the river, rolling the thick smoke ahead of it; he looked around at the steep white descents of the rock, terraced and buttressed here and there with Roman work. The flat land sprawled below him like a vast skirt, striped with stands of trees, clumps of buildings, ordinary men struggling to reap and shock their harvests.

Although it was still morning, the sun was fierce and hot. The river swept to the south side of the rock, almost under this peak. A wooded island protected that bank. He thought,
I would build a curtain wall around the whole rock here, enclose it all
. In his mind he saw this place as the heart of his new kingdom, stretching from the mountains south of Aquitaine to the hills of Scotland.

Another of the prisoners knelt before him, and reluctant to spare any attention from his dream, Henry struck him impatiently on the shoulder before he even finished his vow. Henry straightened, looking south and east, where the rich tree-studded land rolled into the hazy, uncertain distance. That was Aquitaine, down there somewhere. This castle would command it all. The castle that would be raised here when he had brought the whole country under him, curtain walls and towers and great gates. When he brought Aquitaine under him.

He thought of bringing her under him, as if he ditched her with a sword, and his body tingled with passion.

Robert came up, his hands behind him. “Are we staying here the night, my lord? I can give the order to make camp.”

Henry barked a laugh. “It’s hardly midday.” He judged there were two or three hours of daylight left. “I can’t let my brother get so far ahead of us. He went on toward Loudon. We ride in an hour.”

“Yes, my lord.” Robert’s voice wavered only a little, but Henry could tell he did not like this.

“Make sure everybody eats. We need a garrison here,” Henry said. He watched his cousin narrowly. “Pick out ten, fifteen men for a garrison.”

Robert said, “There’s no castle left.”

“They can build one. You can take command.”

At that Robert’s eyes bulged. He had not anticipated this either. Hauling rocks was worse than riding. He said in a crooked voice, “My lord, we have ridden a long way together; I—”

“I’d rather have you with me,” Henry said. He clapped Robert on the shoulder. “Pick out a commander.”

Robert said briskly, “Yes, my lord,” happier now about going on, and stalked off. His voice rose sharply. Henry turned back to the row of the prisoners and nodded, and the next came up and fell to his knees, mumbling his submission.

By dawn, with Geoffrey still well ahead of him, Henry rode into a village and found an open innyard.

“Here. We’ll stop here and rest the horses.” He dismounted. His vanguard spilled out the inn gate and filled the narrow street beyond. The village was only a straggle of huts along the road and the inn was the largest building in it, a rambling shack. The smell of food came deliciously from a back building. Robert came up, gray-faced. He did not bear up well on long rides without sleep.

“Yes, my lord.”

Henry said, “We can’t fit all the men into this village.” Several more of Geoffrey’s men had joined them on the ride down. More than a hundred men followed his banners now, even though he had left behind garrisons at the strong places to hold the ground they had taken. With so many, he could not move as fast as he wanted, and they all needed orders, which made things more complicated. “We’ll get them camped outside the town. Reynard—”