“A son of the Empress Maude? If that is so, he must be a changeling!” When Eleanor failed even to acknowledge the jest, Petronilla subjected her sister to a closer scrutiny. “Eleanor…are you having misgivings?”
“Not about the man, Petra. But the marriage…yes, a few misgivings.”
Petronilla was not taken totally by surprise, for she’d noticed that Eleanor had become more and more preoccupied and pensive as her wedding day drew near. “Why?”
Eleanor was quiet for a few moments. “I suppose,” she said, “because of the past two months, two months in which I was accountable to no man for what I did or what I wanted. I’ve never had freedom like that before, and I found it a sweet taste, indeed…”
“But what good is freedom without security, Eleanor? You need a man to protect Aquitaine from the French Crown and to protect you from those hordes of would-be husbands, eager to share your domains with you, whether you willed it or not.”
“You need not fret, Petra. I am not about to leave Harry at the altar. You are right-I do need a man for the very practical reasons you’ve just argued. And for reasons you did not mention. I want more children. I want a man in my bed again, one who has more in mind than prayer. And I want a crown, I’ll not deny it. All of which I’ve a good chance of getting from Harry.”
Sure now that it was indeed her future husband who was entering her city, Eleanor moved away from the battlements, for she wanted to be below in the great hall to greet him upon his arrival. “I just wish,” she said, with a skepticism that held an oddly wistful note, too, “that the balance of power in a marriage was not tilted so much in the man’s favor.”
Henry could not seem to get comfortable in the bed. For the tenth time, he repositioned his pillow. When he flung the sheets back, he soon felt chilled, but when he drew the covers up, he was too hot. By his increasingly exasperated reckoning, it was well past midnight. This sleepless night before his wedding was shaping up to be the longest one of his entire life.
In less than twelve hours, he and Eleanor were to be wed in the cathedral of St Pierre. She’d made all the arrangements, leaving him nothing to do but show up. He could see the sense in it, for Poitiers was her capital city. He just wasn’t accustomed to being a bystander, marching to a drumbeat not his own.
Their wedding was to be a simple affair, not at all the sort of lavish royal spectacle that would normally have attended the marriage of a Duke of Normandy and a Duchess of Aquitaine, a onetime queen and a would-be king. Henry remembered hearing that when Eleanor and the French king wed, the revelries had lasted for three full days. But for them, there would be nothing so extravagant or elaborate, just a wedding supper after the church ceremony, for had they invited all their vassals to celebrate their wedding, as would be customary, they’d have risked having their nuptials interrupted by an invading French army.
Henry hoped that Eleanor did not feel cheated. Mayhap one royal wedding in a woman’s lifetime was enough for her. For himself, he did not care. He’d always been more interested in where he was going than in how he got there. And even if he’d been one to enjoy such prolonged and high-flown festivities, not here, not now, not in this company for certes.
Eleanor had summoned a few of her most eminent vassals to bear witness to her wedding, those men too devoted or too proud to learn of her marriage after-the-fact. Geoffrey de Rancon, Lord of Taillebourg. Saldebreuil de Sanzay, formerly Eleanor’s constable, newly named as her seneschal. The lords of Lusignan and Thourars. The Count of Angouleme. They’d not liked Eleanor’s first marriage to the French king, and it soon became obvious to Henry that they were not enthusiastic about her second match, either. Their courtesy was cold enough to threaten frostbite, and they watched him as warily as sheepdogs protecting their flocks from a marauding Angevin wolf.
Henry was surprised neither by their suspicions nor by their audacity, for these southern barons were known for their recalcitrance and prickly independence. While they were celebrated for their generosity and humor and joyful zest for life, their conviction that Aquitaine was Eden and they God’s Chosen People had given them a sense of moral superiority that their neighbors often found intolerable.
It had been Geoffrey’s acerbic opinion that the Aquitanians were an ungovernable lot, ready to rebel at any pretext, not in the least awed by authority, as quick to quarrel as they were to laugh. How much of his father’s caustic appraisal was true, Henry had yet to judge. He did not doubt, though, that Eleanor’s vassals would gladly give him as much grief as they’d given Louis-if he let them.
But if he’d anticipated some initial resistance from Eleanor’s barons, he’d not expected trouble from her family. In addition to her sister, she’d invited her maternal uncles, Hugh de Chatellerault and Raoul de Faye, and her illegitimate half-brothers, William and Joscelin, and from them he’d gotten something he’d never encountered before and was utterly unprepared for-condescension.
Shoving his pillow back against the headboard, Henry found himself remembering a story Ranulf had once told, of a man supposedly shot by his own arrow when it ricocheted off a tree. He hadn’t believed it then-or now-but he did feel as if his surprise for Eleanor had somehow rebounded upon him, too. Thinking that his bride would surely be pleased to discover on her wedding night that he could speak her native tongue, he’d made an effort to learn the dialect of the South known as langue d’oc, or Provencal. As he’d always had a good ear for languages, he’d soon picked up enough to impress Eleanor-and also to understand the smug conversational currents flowing around him.
Unlike her barons, Eleanor’s kin had welcomed him with expansive goodwill-to his face. But behind his back, they laughed and jested in their own tongue, always at his expense. They joked about his inferior bloodlines, debating which was worse, having an Angevin sire or a Norman-Scots dam. They boasted to Henry that Eleanor was descended from Charlemagne, and then snickered to one another about the Demon Countess of Anjou, the Devil’s daughter. They lavished compliments upon Henry and then mocked his short hair, calling him a shorn sheep, for all men of fashion wore theirs shoulder-length.
Henry was able to shrug off their supercilious comments about his heritage, reasoning that if they’d not thought the King of France good enough for Eleanor, it was only to be expected that he’d fall short, too. And as he cared nothing for fashion, he could not be wounded by disapproval of that sort. But it stung his pride to be treated like a raw, green lad. It had never occurred to him that Eleanor’s family might see their clandestine courtship as a hunt, their wedding as the kill, and Eleanor as the hunter, he the quarry. Did these dolts truly think that nineteen was so young, that their age difference gave Eleanor such an advantage? Did Eleanor?
And that was the real reason why he lay awake and restless hours after going to bed. Eleanor. Not her unruly barons, not even her vexing relatives. Eleanor.
She’d welcomed him as if he were the most honoured of guests, gracious and obliging, concerned for his comfort. He’d caught her in no indiscretions, no lapses in langue d’oc. She’d been the ideal hostess, poised and polished, as regal in bearing as if that lovely dark head were still adorned with a crown. But as much as he admired her social graces, he looked in vain for the woman he would wed. The teasing temptress in that rain-drenched Paris garden was gone, eclipsed by the Duchess of Aquitaine, worldly and desirable and distant.
He supposed he could not blame her if she was suffering a few eleventh-hour qualms. Watching her entertain him with such impersonal perfection, he’d found himself thinking of an old adage: A burnt child dreads the fire. After fourteen years with St Louis, most of them miserable, was it any wonder that she might be skittish of marriage? Who would understand that better than he? For much of his life, he’d been an unwilling eyewitness to the carnage-strewn battlefield that was his parents’ marriage, hostage to their embittered and irreconcilable demands.
He’d found it easy enough to reassure himself that if Eleanor was indeed having some doubts, it was
only to be expected. But if he was so sure of that, why was he unable to sleep? He refused to believe he might be nervous. The one and only time he’d ever experienced anxiety over bedsport was before his first sexual encounter, at age fourteen. He’d never expected to feel such unease again. But he’d never lain with a woman as seductive and highborn and daunting as Eleanor. His bedmates had been numerous, for he rarely slept alone. But they were usually bedazzled village girls or high-paid harlots. Never a queen, one of the greatest beauties in Christendom.
He’d sometimes felt sorry for women, as they seemed to have a much harder row to hoe than men. What man could be more strong-willed or daring than his mother? A king’s daughter, an empress, a would-be queen in her own right, she’d still been expected to obey his father, and had lost every major battle of their marital wars. It was not that Henry thought women should be given an equal say in the matters of men; he could not imagine anyone making an argument that preposterous. He could not help sympathizing with their plight, nonetheless, for he could envision few fates worse than to be utterly powerless. But as he tossed and turned in one of Eleanor’s guest bedchambers, he discovered that women were not as powerless as he’d often thought. Eleanor’s weapon might be a smile instead of a sword, but she could wreak her own sort of havoc, for certes. How else explain why he was still lying awake in the early hours of this, his wedding day?
Henry and Eleanor were married that Whitsunday afternoon, out in the spring sunlight by the door of the cathedral church of St Pierre. The churchyard was thronged with excited, jostling spectators, for word had soon spread through the city and people turned out in large numbers to watch their lady wed.
Standing before the Bishop of Poitiers, Henry had eyes only for his bride. Eleanor’s wedding gown was form-fitting to the hips, with a swirling full skirt and train, sleeves tight to the elbow and then billowing out in graceful hanging cuffs. The material was a richly woven silk brocade, a deep, dusky shade of gold. Her hair was plaited into two long braids, entwined with gold-thread ribbons, her veil as light as sunlight and almost as transparent, held in place by a gleaming coronet. She wore his bride-gift on her right hand, an emerald ring of beaten gold. The jewel had reminded him of her eyes, but today her hazel irises reflected the color of her gown, taking on a tawny, amber glow.
Cat’s eyes, he thought, giving away no secrets, and slipped the wedding band onto each of her fingers in turn before sliding it down onto the third finger of her left hand, the one judged closest to the heart. Having promised before man and God to cleave unto this beautiful stranger from this day forth, till “death us do part,” he said, “With this ring, I thee wed,” and as a loud burst of cheering rocked the churchyard, he could only hope that this was indeed well done.
Upon their return to Eleanor’s palace, Henry was not pleased to find that the trestle tables had not yet been set up in the great hall. It seemed there was to be dancing before the meal began. Since there would also be entertainment afterward, this meant that the festivities would last till well past dark. He wanted nothing so much as to be alone with Eleanor, to discover again the woman who’d bewitched him in the royal gardens of the Cite Palace, but that would be hours away. Till then, he would have to curb his impatience, politely put up with her barons and family as best he could.
He did try. He would later-much later-insist to Eleanor that he’d acted in good faith, striving to play the part expected of him, that of the eager, joyful bridegroom. Eager he was, without doubt. Joyful…no. He was too tense, too irritated by his new in-laws for genuine joy. But he would have been able to give a reasonably convincing performance-if only he’d not understood langue d’oc.
In his boyhood, one of his favorite stories was of a young man who found a magical cloak, one that rendered him invisible whenever he wore it. Henry had been fascinated by the folktale, but he’d never realized that such a power might be a two-edged sword. Hearing what was not meant for his ears was not a pleasurable experience. The jokes were ribald and forthright in French, but far more offensive in Provencal. Normally he’d have taken the teasing in stride, for that was every bridegroom’s lot. But his sense of humor seemed to have decamped in the night. He could deflect the bawdy jokes aimed at him; he was not easily embarrassed. But the private jesting by Eleanor’s brothers and uncles could not be laughed off, for their mockery was premised upon a highly insulting assumption-that Eleanor would soon have him jumping through hoops and begging for favors like a lady’s spaniel lapdog.
He danced several carols with Eleanor, chatted amiably with Petronilla, the only member of his wife’s family he could abide, and listened with feigned enthusiasm to a song by the troubadour and poet Bernard de Ventadour, one too lavish in praise of Eleanor’s beauty for his liking. Bored and tired and increasingly restive, he found it helped to fortify himself with the free-flowing wine, although he was usually a very sparing drinker. Accepting his third cup of spiced hippocras, he traded thinly veiled barbs with Geoffrey de Rancon. He’d not met Rancon before Poitiers, but the man was known to him; he’d heard the sorry saga of Rancon’s deadly blunder on the march toward Jerusalem, one that had caused the deaths of countless crusaders.
Rancon had been ordered by the French king to halt at the summit of Mount Cadmos, but he’d chosen to disregard Louis’s instructions and led the vanguard onward in search of a better campsite. The king, riding in the rear, was unaware of this, and allowed the rearward to lag behind, thinking they would soon be upon Rancon’s encampment. When the watching Turks swooped down upon them, the French panicked and the rugged mountain terrain was soon soaked in Christian blood. The king himself had narrowly escaped death, and although Eleanor remained steadfastly loyal to her beleaguered vassal, Geoffrey de Rancon had been sent home in disgrace.
Henry was not well disposed toward any man so cavalier about disobeying a royal command, convinced that inevitably led to anarchy, to Stephen’s England. Excusing himself as soon as he could, he was turning to look for Eleanor when he heard her brothers laughing behind him.
“There he goes, on her scent again. I’d wager that in no time at all, she’ll have the lad heeling and going down on command, without even needing a leash!”
“Well, early training works wonders with greyhound pups, fledgling hawks, and yearling colts, Will, so why not with young husbands? It is just a matter of using the right bait!”
Under other circumstances, Henry might have reacted with indifference or annoyance, depending upon his mood. Now he swung around with an oath, his temper flaring up so fast that he had no chance at all of quenching it. Anger long-smoldering took only seconds to become a conflagration.
Eleanor had been slow to realize that something was troubling her new husband, distracted in part by her obligations as hostess and in part by her own edginess about the marriage. Nor did she find it easy to read Henry. He was not like Louis, whose face was a faithful mirror for his every thought. No…Harry was going to be more of a challenge. She was sure he’d give away clues; all men did. But it might take her a while to learn to recognize them.
It was not until their return from the church that she’d begun to sense something was amiss. She’d noticed at breakfast that Henry looked as if he’d slept poorly, but she’d taken his wakefulness as a compliment. Watching him as they danced, though, she’d concluded that he was not enjoying himself. She would have to make sure that the festivities did not drag on too long. She did not know yet how she’d manage that, but she’d find a way. This marriage had to succeed; there was too much at stake.
Declining an offer to join in the circle forming for the next carol, she beckoned to her sister. “Have you seen Harry?”
“Over there, with Will and Joscelin.”
One glance was enough to alert Eleanor to trouble. Henry’s back was to her, but her brothers looked as if they’d been caught bloody-handed over a dead body. She headed toward them, but Henry was already stalking away. “Wait,” she cried out before her brothers could bolt. “The pair of yo
u look guiltier than horse thieves. What happened?”
They exchanged uncomfortable looks. Will shook his head, almost imperceptibly, but Joscelin refused to take the hint. “We have to tell her, Will,” he insisted. “Better she hears it from us.”
Eleanor did not like the sound of that at all. “For the love of God, Jos! Just say it straight out.”
“Eleanor…he understands langue d’oc!”
“Oh, no…” Eleanor stared at them in dismay. If Harry had heard even half of the jokes floating around the hall…“What did you say, Jos? Will?”
Will shrugged, refusing to meet her eyes. Looking shamefaced, Joscelin mumbled, “We were jesting. He ought to have let us know he spoke our tongue.” Squirming under his sister’s accusing eyes, he glanced toward Will for help, got none, and sighed. “We…well, we joked that he’d soon be following you about like one of your greyhounds, or words to that effect…”
Eleanor was not mollified, realizing she’d just been given a cleaned-up version of what Henry had overheard. “I’ve never had a taste for watered-down wine, Jos,” she warned. “How can I make amends unless I know just how grievously you offended him? Try the truth this time.”
But at that moment, there was a stir throughout the hall. The musicians had stopped in the midst of the carol. The dancers halted in puzzlement, the musicians looking apologetically in Eleanor’s direction. She knew they would not have ceased playing so abruptly unless ordered to do so, and there were just two people present with the authority to give such a command. Gathering up her skirts, she started hastily toward her husband. But she was too late; Henry was already mounting the steps of the dais.
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