Her mouth put Henry in mind of ripe peaches. It curved at the corners, not quite a smile, but enough to free a flashing dimple. “My lord duke.” Her voice was as arresting as her appearance, low-pitched and sultry. “And if you are not yet the King of England,” she murmured, “by God, you will be.”
There was a glint of gentle mockery in those shimmering sea-green eyes, but there was something else, too, something elusive and intriguing. This exchange of theirs could not have been more public, under the full scrutiny of the French court, and yet it was also a moment of odd intimacy; it was almost as if, Henry decided, they were sharing a joke no one else got.
It had been arranged for the Angevins to stay at the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, on the Left Bank of the Seine, and it was there that Henry found his father. Nor did he need to coax Geoffrey into resuming the peace talks; that was always Geoffrey’s intent. He confessed readily that his walkout had been a calculated ploy, meant to checkmate Abbot Bernard and unsettle the French. Henry was not surprised, for only Maude had been able to send Geoffrey’s temper up in flames. With the rest of his foes, he was always coldly in control, as Abbot Bernard and Louis would soon discover.
The talks began anew on the morrow, in an atmosphere of strained and pessimistic civility. In the days that followed, Henry was formally introduced to Queen Eleanor, met her notorious younger sister, Petronilla, and had several opportunities to take the measure of the French king and his barons. But that seemed all he’d be taking away from his Paris visit, for the negotiations were soon deadlocked. Geoffrey was not willing to free Berlai, while Henry was loath to make further territorial concessions to the French Crown. Geoffrey had already ceded half of the county of the Vexin in order to induce Louis to recognize him as Duke of Normandy, and the French king was now demanding the remainder of the Vexin as his price for extending recognition to Henry, a price he found too high. With neither side willing to yield, this peace conference seemed likely to be but a prelude to war.
IN midweek, the French king gave a lavish feast and entertainment for his obstinate vassals, but if he’d harbored any hopes of wining and dining the Angevins into a more obliging frame of mind, he was to be disappointed. Geoffrey and Henry were agreeable guests; they exchanged pleasantries with the French king, flirted with Eleanor, tactfully avoided any mention of Eustace, and even treated Abbot Bernard with polite deference. But that was just good manners; the negotiations remained bogged down in a quagmire of mutual suspicions and shared intransigence.
The following morning saw an early visitor to the queen’s chambers, for the Countess of Vermandois was becoming uneasy on her sister’s behalf and had decided a candid talk was in order. Petronilla had no illusions about the troubled state of Eleanor’s marriage. She envisioned it as a sun-scorched, arid field, parched and barren and dangerously dry…and if there was ever a man with a knack for striking sparks, it was Count Geoffrey of Anjou. The more time that Eleanor spent with Geoffrey and his son, the more smoke Petronilla smelled.
Petronilla’s disapproval was practical, not moral, for her conscience was an elastic one, able to stretch enough to accommodate a multitude of sins. Nor could she fault Eleanor’s taste, for Geoffrey was undeniably one of the handsomest men she’d ever laid eyes upon. But her sister’s timing was deplorable. Geoffrey might be gorgeous, but Petronilla did not think he could be trusted to bed Louis’s queen without boasting about it afterward, and infidelity was a lethal weapon to give an aggrieved husband on the brink of divorce.
She didn’t worry about finding Louis in Eleanor’s bed, despite the earliness of the hour. Since the tragedy at Vitry, Louis’s marital ardor had been effectively quenched by his numbing sense of guilt, and that flame had never burned very hot even in the first years of the marriage. Louis’s love for his wife had always been struggling against the lessons he’d learned too well during his boyhood at the abbey of Saint-Denis: that carnal lust was sinful, women were the Devil’s lures, and celibacy the chosen path to salvation.
Thinking now of the barrenness of her sister’s marriage bed stirred an old memory. One of Eleanor’s ladies-in-waiting had eavesdropped upon a confidential conversation between the two sisters and overheard the queen say, “I thought I’d married a king and found I’d married a monk.” The young woman could not resist sharing so sensational a bit of gossip, and had been dismissed in disgrace once Eleanor discovered her betrayal. It was a much-quoted remark, but only Petronilla knew it was a counterfeit coin. The girl had gotten the words right, the intonation wrong. People repeated it as mockery; it had been said, though, in frustration and sadness.
Eleanor looked up in comical disbelief as Petronilla was ushered in, for the younger woman had been known to sleep till noon. “I’d wager you’ve not been to bed at all!” But she agreed to dismiss her attendants when Petronilla asked, watching her sister with quizzical curiosity as she continued to brush her hair. “So…what has gotten you up at such an ungodly hour? Did you have another quarrel with Raoul?”
“Eleanor, surely you’ve noticed by now that Raoul and I like to quarrel? That is how we liven up our lovemaking.” Petronilla settled herself on the edge of the bed and began to pet her sister’s brindle greyhound. “I am here to talk about Geoffrey of Anjou. Let me say at the outset that I do not blame you for being tempted. That man could start a lust-crazed riot in a convent full of nuns.”
“Mayhap Benedictines, but surely not Cistercians? Your tribute to Geoffrey’s manhood definitely conjures up some intriguing images, and I daresay he’d be the first to agree with you. But all those lustful nuns notwithstanding, I have no intention of taking Geoffrey as my lover.”
“Truly?” Petronilla was relieved, yet puzzled. “I must have misread the signs. But I ought to warn you-I think Louis did, too. I watched him watching you and Geoffrey last night, and he looked very disgruntled.”
“I surely hope so.”
“Eleanor…what is going on? What are you up to?”
Eleanor looked at her thoughtfully, then put her finger to her lips, and moved swiftly and soundlessly across the chamber. Petronilla watched in astonishment as she jerked the door open. “Is it as bad as that? You really think Louis’s men would spy on you?”
Eleanor’s lip curled. “Thierry Galeran would hide under my bed-if only he could fit. Yes, I am quite sure I am being watched. The death vigil for my marriage has begun, and with the venerable Abbot Bernard himself standing ready to give the Last Rites.”
Petronilla should not have felt any surprise. Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis had been the French king’s chief adviser, utterly insistent that his marriage was valid in God’s Eyes. But he’d died that past January, and the French king was now heeding Abbot Bernard-Abbot Bernard who believed that if all women were suspect, daughters of Eve, Eleanor was one of Lucifer’s own.
But even though the news was expected, it still came as a shock, for the ramifications would be earthshaking. Divorce was usually disastrous for a woman; she would invariably lose custody of her children, her dower rights, and often her good name as well. Eleanor would also lose a crown. For a woman who’d been Queen of France, the rest of her life was likely to be anticlimactic. Petronilla thought it was the true measure of her sister’s desperation that she’d wanted a divorce, even knowing what it might cost her.
“Eleanor…there is still time to resurrect your marriage. Louis does love you, and if you could only get pregnant again-”
“No. The marriage has been dead for years, Petra. I would not try to breathe life back into a corpse. Better we finally bury it. It is not the divorce that is stealing my sleep at night, it is what happens afterward. It would indeed be ironic, Sister, if the peace should prove more perilous than the war!”
Petronilla nodded somberly. Eleanor was the greatest heiress in Christendom, for she held Aquitaine in her own right, a vast and rich province, stretching from the River Loire to the Pyrenees, comparable in size and wealth to France itself. Once Eleanor was free, she’d be
a tempting prize, indeed, and she’d be fair game for any baron with more ambitions than scruples. All too often, heiresses were abducted and forced into marriage, as both women well knew. The year before his death, their father had become betrothed to the daughter of the Viscount of Limoges, only to have her stolen away and wed against her will to the Count of Angouleme. So the danger was a real one, and would remain so until Eleanor was safely wed again.
But as Eleanor’s liege lord, Louis would be the one to choose another husband for her, and Petronilla did not think he’d choose a husband to her liking. Whatever Louis’s failings as a husband, he was still King of France. It seemed to Petronilla that whomever Eleanor married next, it was bound to be a comedown. She could not help thinking that Eleanor’s wretched marriage to Louis was still the lesser of evils, but she knew better than to say so. Eleanor took no more kindly to unsolicited advice than she did; she would only be leaving herself open to a pointed reminder of her own stubborn insistence upon having Raoul, even if that meant they’d be together in Hell.
No matter what angle she viewed it from, her sister’s future looked precarious at best. But one thing she never doubted-that Eleanor would not sit placidly by whilst her destiny was decided by others. “What mean you to do?”
Eleanor sat down beside her on the bed. “Well, this much I know for certes-that the only fate worse than being yoked to Louis for the rest of my life would be marriage to a man handpicked by that sanctimonious, self-proclaimed saint, Bernard.”
Eleanor’s greyhound reached up suddenly, swiping her cheek in a wet kiss and making her laugh. Almost at once, though, she sobered. “And so,” she continued coolly, “I mean to do my own husband-hunting.”
Petronilla rolled her eyes. “And you dare to call me reckless!”
“Why is it reckless to want a say in my own life? You can well imagine the sort of pathetic French puppet they’d choose for me, a lackey who’d look to Paris for guidance the way infidels look toward Mecca. Do you think I’d entrust Aquitaine to such a weak-willed wretch? I need a husband who’d not be afraid to defy the French Crown or even the Church, a man who could command respect from my duchy’s unruly, quarrelsome barons.” She paused, and then added dryly, “A man I could respect, too, would be a pleasant change.”
“You are not asking much, are you?”
Eleanor reclined back against the pillows and smiled impishly at her sister. “Oh, but I want much more than that, Petra. Those were Aquitaine’s needs, but I have my own, too. I want a man who knows his own mind, who sees nothing odd about reading for the fun of it. A man who likes to laugh, even at himself. A man who is not so intent upon the glories of the next world that it blinds him to the pleasures of this one.” Eleanor was no longer smiling. “Above all, I want a man I do not have to coax to my bed.”
“And where do you expect to find this paragon of manhood? I can think of only one man who measures up to those exacting standards, and Raoul is already spoken for!” Picking up the brush, Petronilla combed out her sister’s long hair, then began to braid it with nimble fingers. “What of Geoffrey? Why then were you flirting with him? Merely to vex Louis?”
“I had a twofold purpose. I wanted to remind Louis how mismatched we are, just in case he’d begun to have second thoughts about the divorce. The only voice he heeds these days is that of our saint in residence, who divides all of womankind into three categories: nuns, sluts, and potential sluts. So I knew he’d look upon flirtation as only slightly less heinous a sin than sacrilege, and I was right. You see, Petra, those famed mystical trances of Bernard’s are only part of his sleight-of-hand. When Louis opens his mouth, lo and behold-Bernard’s words come out.”
It was not often that Eleanor let her bitterness show so nakedly, and Petronilla felt a surge of immediate and indignant sympathy. Her loyalties burned too hot and too deep ever to allow for detachment or objectivity; she supposed that Louis had his side, too, but she had no interest whatsoever in hearing it. Eleanor was right to look for a way out, she decided. The marriage was indeed dead and decomposing, and keeping up the pretense would be like living in a charnel house, trying all the while to ignore the stench.
“Forget what I said earlier about attempting to mend the rift. I’d not urge you to run back into a burning building just because you had nowhere else to go. But I am still curious about that ‘twofold’ remark of yours. Why else were you seeking Geoffrey out? I know you claim you have no interest in a dalliance, but you must have been tempted, at least a little…?”
“I am beginning to think Raoul had best keep an eye on you till Geoffrey departs Paris! Must I assure you again that I am not as susceptible as you to a handsome face? Geoffrey of Anjou was my red herring, no more than that.”
Petronilla’s frown was one of bafflement. She had hunted enough to understand Eleanor’s allusion; drawing a herring across a trail was said to throw pursuing dogs off the scent. But she did not see its application, not at first. When it finally came to her, she gasped aloud and inadvertently jerked on Eleanor’s braid. “Holy Mother Mary! It is not Geoffrey at all, is it? Not the sire-the son!”
Eleanor laughed. “Glory be, at last! Are we such an unlikely pairing, that you never once thought of Henry?”
“It is a brilliant match, Eleanor,” Petronilla enthused. “When I was ransacking my brain for a suitable husband, I did not even think of him, I admit it…mayhap because of the age difference. And yet he is the ideal choice! Of course he is rather young, but he is no green lad, for certes. No son of Maude and Geoffrey could lack for boldness, so you’d be getting a husband willing to challenge the French Crown. One with prospects enough to unsettle even the most complacent of former husbands-Duke of Normandy, heir to Anjou and Maine, not to forget that very intriguing claim across the Channel. Jesu, Eleanor, he might be King of England one day!”
“I’d say that is a foregone conclusion, Petra. Henry strikes me as a bowman who rarely misses the target. I’d wager he gets whatever he aims for.”
Petronilla looked closely into her sister’s face, and then grinned. “So, that is the way the wind blows, does it? I think you fancy the lad!”
Eleanor grinned, too. “Let’s just say I think he has…potential.”
Petronilla burst out laughing, leaning over to give her sister an exuberantly affectionate embrace. Eleanor’s greyhound took that as an invitation and jumped onto the bed. “Felice, down!” Eleanor fended off the dog with a pillow, laughing, too, and for a few moments, they managed to forget about the high stakes, the all-or-nothing gamble that Eleanor was about to make.
It did not even occur to Petronilla to wonder if Henry would be receptive to Eleanor’s overtures. No man in his right mind would turn down Eleanor and Aquitaine; that she never doubted. Nor did she see a need to speak of Eleanor’s daughters, six-year-old Marie and one-year-old Alix. They were lost to Eleanor, whether she married Henry or not, for the French king would never give them up. There’d already been discussions about finding them suitable highborn husbands, forging marital alliances that would further French interests, and as likely as not, they’d grow to girlhood in far-off foreign courts, just as the eight-year-old Maude had once set sail for Germany, child bride of the Imperial Emperor Heinrich V.
“You have not yet had a heart-to-heart talk with Henry?”
Eleanor shook her head. “I have been observing him closely all week, and I like what I’ve seen so far. He is quick-witted, deliberate, and rather cocky-but I need to know if he is also discreet. If Louis had even a suspicion of what I was planning, I’d find myself convent-caged for the remainder of my days, and I do not think I’d make a good nun.”
Eleanor had spoken lightly, but there was too much truth in what she’d said for humor. Petronilla was suddenly and uncharacteristically pensive. Eleanor was right. Louis would do almost anything to keep her from marrying Henry and uniting Aquitaine with Normandy and mayhap even England. She could not have chosen anyone better calculated to appall the king and desolate the man.<
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“Eleanor, are you sure you want to do this? Have you thought about all you’d be risking?”
“Of course I have,” Eleanor said impatiently. After a moment, though, she smiled. “But then I think about all I’d be gaining!”
Paris had been sweltering in a high-summer heat wave, but the weather changed abruptly by week’s end. The city awoke to a steady downpour and dropping temperatures. It was a dismal day outside, and no less gloomy within the Cite Palace, where the peace negotiations had broken down in recriminations and acrimony. Geoffrey had a hangover and a throbbing headache, and he’d walked out in midmorning, once again declaring he’d had enough and would be departing for Anjou on the morrow. This time Henry believed him.
Henry remained a while longer, in a final attempt to come to terms with the French king. It was another exercise in futility, for neither one was willing to compromise. The rain was still falling by the time Henry and William de Vere, his chancellor, emerged out onto the wide stone steps of the Cite Palace. Henry was just starting down them when he was accosted by a woman in a red mantle.
“May I have a few moments of your time, my lord Henry?” Her face was half-hidden by her hood, but Henry readily agreed, for he’d recognized the voice and was curious to find out what the Lady Petronilla wanted from him.
Sending his men back into the hall, Henry fell into step beside Petronilla, hiding his surprise when she led him out into the deserted, rain-drenched royal gardens. If not for the weather, it would have been an idyllic setting, with bordered walkways, raised flower beds abloom with poppies, Madonna lilies, and spectacular scarlet peonies, a grassy mead spangled with snow-white daisies, and an abundance of fragrant red roses. Today, though, it was wet and wind-raked, the turf seats soaked, the paths pockmarked with puddles; even the River Seine looked different, flat and leaden-grey under a lowering slate sky.
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