by Anne O'Brien
‘One thing …’ Henry repeated.
Yes, he was uncertain. ‘Only one?’ I attempted a light-heartedness I suddenly did not feel.
Buckling his sword belt, Henry raised his gaze slowly to mine where I sat on the bed to make some semblance of order in the rat’s nest of my hair. All the soft humour of the past hour was suddenly replaced by an unusual hesitancy. His reply jolted me.
‘The child.’
Ah. The child. A boy. And not mine. When I had heard the rumours I had grieved over it; now I knew it for the truth, from Henry’s own lips. Henry’s past was his own affair, as was mine, but still I resented it, for this child had been conceived since our own marriage. I felt anger clench its fist in my throat—but at least he had not hidden it from me, as I kept the memory of my stillborn child in Jerusalem locked tight within me. I swallowed hard against the obstruction—I was in no position to be judgmental.
‘Is he yours?’ I asked. Of course he was!
‘She says so.’ I raised my brows. ‘Some will tell you that she’s gulled me, fooled me into accepting what’s not mine. But I think he is, and Ykenai was never less than honest. I’ve taken him in exchange for a purse of gold to set her up with a house and a chance to change her profession if she so wishes.’ His eyes were stern and direct.
‘Did you love her?’ A woman’s question, full of envy, carefully hidden.
‘No. I was needy.’ A man’s reply, a careless shrug.
‘I don’t like the thought of you with her.’
‘And I don’t like Bernat de Ventadour singing love songs to you!’
‘And so?’
‘Will you take him?’
For a moment I finished braiding my hair, head tilted to consider this.
‘Why should I take your bastard by an ale-house whore?’
‘Because I ask it of you. And because it’s you I love.’
Easy to say. Abandoning my hair, I picked at the soft pelt of the bed cover, hiding my thoughts.
‘He is called Geoffrey,’ Henry informed me. ‘If you can’t find it in you, then I’ll make other arrangements.’
‘What arrangements?’ I knew it sounded cold and uncompromising but in that moment, my body still warm from his, it was hard to forgive him.
‘I don’t know. No—look—I don’t want that.’ I looked up and for the first time saw a shadow of regret chase across his features. ‘Here’s the thing, Eleanor—will you take on his upbringing? He’s a fine lad and deserves the best from me. I can’t leave him with his mother. Will you do it for me, raise him as my son? He’ll not threaten the inheritance of our own children—but I want him. I want recognition of him as mine. Take him, Eleanor!’
I sighed. This would not be a seamless marriage. But still. Better to have the child of Henry’s blood raised under my authority than perhaps used by others with an eye to future power. Bastard children could be a weapon in the right hands. So why not? Geoffrey would be raised with William and the other sons I intended to have.
At the end I could not refuse him.
‘I’ll do it. But if I catch you with the fecund Ykenai, Henry, I’ll crack your skull.’
‘I’ll have to make sure you don’t catch me, then, won’t I?’
With a leer of pure mischief and renewed appetite, he pounced to pin me to the covers. The lacings on his robe were simple to undo.
‘You have a generous soul, Eleanor. Have I told you today how your hair reminds me of the sun shining through autumn beeches in England?’
His kisses were sweet and for now he was all mine, all I could ask for. I was content.
I was pregnant before he left.
Disaster stalks us when we least expect it. Perhaps I should not have been so sanguine, so sure of my future contentment. It was some months before Henry returned. That was not the problem—I think I had at last come to terms with our relationship continuing at a distance. Neither was it Geoffrey, Henry’s son. He had a charm all of his own, he learned to talk early and without cease. No one, not even I, was immune from his childish prattling and his determination to wield the wooden sword—a thoughtless gift from Henry—to the danger of all within reach. No, it was not Geoffrey—I learned to love him as I did my own son. The disaster when it hit was unexpected and beyond my control.
So the little cavalcade clattered into the courtyard with Henry at the forefront and I met it with no foreboding. A familiar scene of arrival and chaos. I made my way down the steps, William in my arms, Geoffrey at my heels, where he had recently attached himself, whatever I might be doing, and walked unsuspectingly across the courtyard to greet them.
‘My lord.’ I kept the public greeting formal. ‘Welcome home.’ And then, because I couldn’t resist it: ‘I didn’t expect to see you so soon. I thought the child would have been born first.’
Raising his hand slowly, Henry pushed back the face-guard of his closed helm. ‘Eleanor …’ He closed his eyes, opened them.
‘Henry …?’
‘I had to come … I had to be here.’
‘Why?’ I frowned. ‘Are we in danger here? I can’t think why.’ Rouen’s walls would keep out the strongest besieging force.
With no more ado and in habitual impressive style Henry slid from his stallion to land in an untidy heap of mail and mud-and sweat-stained russet cloak at my feet, where he lay inert and did not stir.
‘Henry!’
He lay on the stones as if life had fled.
‘Henry!’ Depositing William on the ground, with no consideration for either my cumbersome skirts or my increasing girth, I knelt beside him, removing the helmet with fingers that trembled ridiculously, pushing back the coif. ‘Henry!’
When there was no response, a bolt of fear ran through me to strike at heart and belly. For a terrible moment, until I felt his chest rise and fall under my hand, nausea gripped and my vision was blurred. I looked up at the knights who surrounded us.
‘What’s wrong with him?’ And then I saw the man who had dismounted to drop to one knee beside me. ‘Geoffrey. What are you doing here?’
Geoffrey, Henry’s sullen ambitious younger brother, would-be abductor of my person. He was still sullen.
‘I’ve come with him,’ he snarled. ‘We’ve made a truce.’
‘Or you sued for peace,’ I snarled back, pulling off Henry’s gauntlets, unlacing the mail at his throat. ‘I suppose you had no choice—since Henry had stripped you of your castles! Who’d want a landless traitor for an ally?’
‘By God! I’m no traitor …’
But I wasn’t listening. Every sense was fixed on the man who lay under my hands, as it had been from the beginning. He was unnervingly still. Henry was so rarely still.
‘Is he injured?’ I demanded. ‘Wounded?’ I did not think so.
‘No,’ Geoffrey replied, unable to hide his disquiet. ‘The sickness came on him last week. He’s been fighting it but he’s getting weaker.’
Sickness? ‘Carry him inside,’ I ordered, struggling to my feet, reclaiming William, who had been rescued from the dangers of inquisitiveness by one of Henry’s captains.
So they did, and to his chamber where they laid him on the bed and I took stock.
Henry’s face was grey and sweating along brow and lip, although his skin felt clammy and cold to my touch. He was out of his senses, his body twitching in the throes of some nightmare. What was this? Plague? But there was no obvious rash. The disease of the gut that had carried off both my father and his? But there was no vomiting or voiding. My hands shook even more as I loosed the buckle of his sword belt and drew it from under him. How helpless I felt with no knowledge of sickness and its causes.
I sent for the one source of help I could think of.
‘Agnes …’ I could barely speak for fear. ‘What is it?’
She touched his forehead, his throat, the place where blood pounded furiously beneath his chin. Frowned heavily.
‘An ague of some kind—a sweating sickness. It has him in its grip.’
/> ‘Will he die?’ I hardly dared ask, and dreaded the answer more. They were, I think, the hardest words I had even spoken.
‘Not if we can get the fever down. It puts a strain on the heart, lady.’
‘His heart is strong.’
‘And so is he—but the fever can draw strength from the strongest.’
Here was no reassurance. My belly clenched hard with fear, causing the child to kick and squirm. ‘Do you know what to do?’
‘Perhaps. I can try. I’ve seen it before, when I was with Queen Adelaide at Maurienne. Some say it’s bad air, some that it’s foul water.’ She looked at me and gave me the honesty I demanded. ‘It can be dangerous, whatever the cause.’
‘Don’t let him die, I beg of you.’ I covered my mouth with my fingers. ‘I need him.’
I knew it for the truth. Not the power, not the security for Aquitaine, not even the hope of a crown, but him. I needed Henry. I supposed this was love, with all its pain and inconvenience.
I let Agnes take charge. She had the skills, and she was of a mind to make me sit and rest. What good putting the child at risk, she snapped when I had at first refused. What help would I be to her if I too was sick? True enough. So I obeyed and kept my fear within me.
By the Virgin, it was hard to sit and watch. Stripped of his mail, his tunic and chausses, the predations of the fever were obvious, skin waxy, muscles lax. In so short a time without food but determined to push on home, his body had fined down to flesh and bone. Without any overt sympathy Agnes set herself with Henry’s body servant to make him as comfortable as she could with cloths soaked in cold water to bring down the fever that burned him up.
What a long frightening process it was, trying to force through his lips an infusion of white willow bark. All I could do was stay out of her way, or sit beside him. And I did, night and day, as he thrashed in hot fever or shivered in ice. I held his hand. I talked to him. I talked to him incessantly of things to tie him to this life. I told him of what he would do when he returned to England. Of how his army awaited him to go and take the throne that was his by right. I described to him the pride he must feel when the crown of England finally rested on his brow. I told him he must recover. That all depended on him. I talked until I had no voice and Henry surely must wake to tell me to shut up.
‘You must rest, lady.’ Finally Agnes turned her attention to me.
I shook my head in defiance. ‘I rode through Outremer, faced mountains, swollen rivers, flood and constant attack. I survived Louis’s treachery. I survived abduction and imprisonment. A few nights without sleep won’t harm me.’
‘But the child …’
‘The child will be strong, as is his father. A few more nights will not hurt.’
‘It might be more than a few nights. He’s young and strong but—’
‘No, Agnes.’ I gripped her hand for comfort, for reassurance. ‘If I go to rest on my bed, if I sleep, Henry’s perverse enough to die as soon as I leave the room. How would I forgive myself for that? I stay here, Agnes, until we know—one way or the other.’
I sounded heartless. I knew it. But I was not. My heart was under attack and I had no defence against the pain. By God, he frightened me. Death crouched in the corner of the room like a malign shadow, all claws and teeth, as vicious as one of his Angevin lions. Some days his chest barely rose and fell so that my fears leapt again and again that his weakened body had given up the fight. At other times there was no calming him and I joined Agnes in holding him to the bed, applying damp cloths, holding him as she forced him to accept draughts of nameless potions. Then there were the hours when he ranted and cried out. Wordless imprecations and demands. Never my name but Stephen and Eustace, once Geoffrey. Once even Louis. In his delirium, Henry was still campaigning.
He did not ask for me.
It hurt, but the knowledge of my love for him burned with a true flame. I fixed my whole attention on his face, the flushed features carved to a strangely fine elegance by the fever. Could I hold him to this life by willpower alone? I no longer painted pictures of what he would do when he recovered: now I dared him to die, challenged him to leave me. I would not allow it. I would not permit it. I talked and talked until my voice was hoarse, and if he could hear me I thought he must wish me to the Devil. I have no memory of most of it but I commanded him to step back from the brink. When he stirred and muttered in unintelligible slurrings of words I gripped his hand in mine and willed him to live. To live for himself and all he envisioned for the future. To live for me.
How selfish does love make us?
‘I will not let you die, Henry. So make up your mind to return to life!’
One night, when his ravings terrified me, when we were alone, and because I was sure he could not hear me, I told him I loved him and that to live alone without him would break my heart.
‘I love you, Henry Plantagenet.’
Had I ever said such simple words to his face? I don’t think I had, too wary of opening my emotions to any man. But here was Henry, his life hanging on a thread. Here we were, wed because of some strange unfathomable force that neither of us questioned or fought against. Henry, however much I might not have chosen it, was lodged in the very centre of my heart.
There was no response. Henry’s head thrashed from side to side, sweat glistening on his chest and arms where he struggled to escape the bed linen.
‘I love you, damn you! Don’t leave me now.’
Unable to calm him, afraid of the violence of his movements, I summoned Agnes and we followed the same hopeless routine of cold water and white willow bark in wine. Henry sank into the grip of unconsciousness. Inconsequentially I noticed that his cropped hair was growing long. With a stifled sob I smoothed it back from his forehead.
In the brief interlude, I fell asleep in the chair set at the side of his bed, my swollen ankles propped up on a footstool. When I woke, to daylight, my neck was sore, my shoulder painful from sleeping awkwardly. I grimaced and stretched. All was quiet in the room.
With a gasp of fear, I focused on the still figure on the bed.
‘Eleanor …’ The breath of a whisper.
Henry was awake, his eyes calm. Face thin and gaunt, worryingly so, but his skin was no longer flushed or slick with sweat. For a long moment our eyes touched and held, neither of us finding words to say, Henry in his weakness, me in a strangely painful and shy diffidence. There was so much I wanted to say to him.
Did I tell him I loved him? I did not.
Did I soothe and caress my husband newly returned to life? I did not.
‘So you’re awake and like to live,’ I said. ‘And about time too. Do you know how long I’ve been sitting here? Now I can get some sleep.’
‘I knew you’d be here,’ Henry croaked, voice rusty from disuse.
‘Where else would I be?’ My heart leapt with joy.
‘When I was ill …’ he spoke carefully, as if choosing every word ‘ … this was where I wanted to be.’ He stretched out his hand and I took it. ‘I told them to bring me home. To bring me to you.’
I smiled and ran my finger over the strong steady beat of blood at his wrist.
‘You are home. Now you will be well.’
There was nothing more to say between us.
Until Henry’s next words. ‘Is Geoffrey here?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Send him to me.’
‘You need to eat first.’
‘I need to see Geoffrey.’
The familiar flare of jealousy at his single-mindedness sharpened my temper but I did not voice it. Weak he may be but his will was as dominant as ever. I stifled a sigh and gave in, acknowledging that the rest of our life together would be like this.
‘I hear you’ve made a truce.’
‘Yes. Better to have him with me than holding hands with Louis.’
‘A statesman at last, I see.’ I smiled wryly against the little ache that his mind was already leaping ahead, away from me.
‘I’v
e grown into it.’ He sighed. ‘A mug of ale would be welcome, lady.’
I walked to the door.
‘Eleanor …’
I stopped but did not look back.
‘Come back when I’ve finished with my brother.’
Now I looked back—and returned his smile. ‘Yes, I will.’
So Geoffrey came, with the ale, and I left them to talk tactics. Henry would never change.
It was dark, before dawn. A peremptory knock thumped against the door of our chamber. Now beyond the sixth month of my pregnancy I was unwilling to stir, but Henry, restored to vigour in a disgustingly short space of time after all the dread he had put me through, was awake in an instant, leaping from bed, sword in hand, while I barely struggled out of sleep.
After a brief exchange of information, he was back, snatching randomly at clothes in the light of a candle taken from the messenger.
‘God’s blood!’ He stubbed his foot against one of his travelling chests. ‘Eleanor! Wake up.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s come. Wake up!’
Now I sat up, gripped by his voice, the urgency, the underlying excitement. He was already pulling on his boots, swearing as one of the hounds bounded through the still open door to rub affectionately against his legs.
‘What’s happened?’
‘Get off!’ He pushed the hound away and lunged to kneel beside me, cupping his hands around my face to kiss my lips and cheeks. I could feel his energy all but rebounding from the stone walls. ‘Stephen’s dead. A flux of haemorrhoids. Probably from sitting for so long on a cold throne that didn’t rightly belong to him.’ He laughed in unseemly mirth. ‘Dead. Sooner than I could ever have hoped.’ Henry was already halfway to the door.
‘Where are you going?’ As if I didn’t know. I tried not to sigh. I would be an abandoned wife again before the week was out and I did not like the thought.
‘To Barfleur. And then to England.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
WHAT followed was a day of uproar and turmoil. Weapons, supplies, horses, transport, all the demands of a military campaign marshalled with Henry’s habitual concern for detail. He was everywhere, overseeing every decision, as if he had not so recently lain under death’s shadow. Had he not spent his whole life in the centre of such warlike demands? Had he not planned for this moment when he could come into his own? Henry’s vassals were summoned to Barfleur for immediate invasion. With his brothers Geoffrey and William, a clutch of bishops and host of Norman and Angevin magnates, Henry was intent on travelling to impress. To put the fear of God into any who might toss a coin on the possibility of rebellion.