A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver

by E. L. Konigsburg

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Eleanor said. She rested her forehead on her knees and then turned her head toward Abbot Suger. “Your not being there made a difference,” she said, smiling.

  “That’s not what made the big difference,” boomed Matilda-Empress.

  Abbot Suger turned to look at Matilda-Empress and then said, “Are you going to tell me what made the big difference?”

  “Eleanor met my son Henry, and she fell madly in love with him. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Not quite that simple, Mother Matilda. Nothing in our century was that simple. There was my boredom with life at Louis’s court. And there was always the Aquitaine.”

  “Move over,” Matilda-Empress said. The tiny abbot moved to the left, Eleanor moved to the right; the cloud compressed as Matilda-Empress sat between them. She glared at her daughter-in-law. “I’ll tell it as I saw it,” she said.

  “There is no other way to tell a story,” the abbot answered as he settled himself deeper into the cloud.

  1

  IN THE SUMMER following the death of Abbot Suger, my husband, Geoffrey, went to the French court to pay homage to Louis. He took our son Henry with him. Geoffrey, my husband, was Count of Anjou; everyone called him Geoffrey Plantagenet because he always wore a stalk of that beautiful wild broom, planta genista, in his hat. Henry, our son, had picked up the habit, so he was called Plantagenet, too. It became our family name.

  Geoffrey, my husband, was also called Geoffrey the Fair because he was handsome; he knew it. Henry, my son, was also handsome; he knew it, too.

  There were a lot of things that Geoffrey could have done but did not. He could have joined Louis on Crusade, but he did not. He could have paid homage to Louis years before, but he did not. Geoffrey never did anything that did not suit his purposes, his immediate purposes.

  Neither love nor loyalty brought Geoffrey to court at that late date to pay homage to his king and queen. Necessity brought him. Henry, our son, had been named Duke of Normandy. In order for him to collect the taxes on his lands, he needed the royal stamp of approval; Henry needed to pay homage to his overlord, King Louis, and at the same time receive the kiss of peace from his king.

  Henry’s good looks may have come from his father, but his important titles came from me—Matilda, daughter of King Henry I of England and granddaughter of the man who even today was the last successful conqueror of England. Before he had invaded England in the year 1066, my grandfather was called William the Bastard because he was. After the year 1066, he was called William the Conqueror because he was.

  When Stephen, the present king of England died, the crown would go to Henry, my son. Stephen was my worthless nephew. I had kept alive my claim to the throne by making a lot of noise about it both in England and France, and by lining up barons and lords who pledged their support to me. Geoffrey and I thought it would be a good idea to get Henry engaged to Marie, the daughter of Eleanor and Louis. Marie was five years old at the time. Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, however, said that he could never allow a marriage between our son, Henry, and any daughter of Eleanor. “Cousins,” he said. It seems that the Abbot Bernard found cousins in any marriage of which he did not approve. I was tempted to ask him whom he thought Cain and Abel had married, but Geoffrey made me hold my tongue. He was already in enough trouble with the abbot. Abbot Bernard had recently had him excommunicated.

  The Abbot Bernard made a habit of doing that to my husband. It was always done more for politics than religion. Bernard always sided with Louis in any quarrels that came up between Louis and Geoffrey. And now that Louis had returned from the Crusade and now that Abbot Suger was dead, Abbot Bernard was always using the Church as a club over Geoffrey’s head. What had Geoffrey done that was so terrible? I put his case before you:

  For three years King Louis’s steward had been attacking our castles in the Vexin. The Vexin was a little wedge of land between our Normandy and Louis’s France. The Vexin was not large, but it was important. Geoffrey was unable to do anything in return because of the Truce of God. The Truce of God was an order from the Pope, which said that no one was allowed to attack the lands of any lords who were on Crusade.

  As soon as Louis returned from Crusade, Geoffrey went right to the source of the trouble. He poured boiling oil on the rafters of the steward’s very own castle; then he fired flaming arrows at it. People poured out of the castle along with the flames. One who came running was the steward himself. Geoffrey caught him like a runaway puppy and put him in a dungeon. Abbot Bernard was shocked. No one, he said, could treat an officer of the king that way. Geoffrey said that he could. Bernard ordered Geoffrey to release the steward. Geoffrey said no. So Abbot Bernard excommunicated Geoffrey. Geoffrey was determined to prove his point. He brought the steward to the castle in chains. Abbot Bernard, who was at court with Eleanor and Louis, was amazed at his nerve. He called him brazen.

  There they were: Queen Eleanor, King Louis and Abbot Bernard on one side. Geoffrey, Henry and the steward (in chains) on the other.

  Geoffrey bowed. “I came, your majesty, to pay homage to you and your lady and to request that you recognize my son, Henry, as Duke of Normandy.” He said all this very solemnly even as he was holding the rope that bound the hands of his prisoner—like a palfrey on a leash.

  Abbot Bernard answered, “Give up your prisoner, Count Geoffrey, and I shall lift the ban of excommunication from you, and King Louis will recognize your son as Duke of Normandy.”

  “Give up my prisoner? What has holding a prisoner that is rightfully mine to do with my son’s collecting the taxes that are rightfully his?”

  One look from the fierce blue eyes of Bernard was usually enough for most people. Most people believed that the blue of his eyes was the fire of Heaven. “Give up your prisoner,” Abbot Bernard repeated. “It is a sin to keep your king’s steward in chains.”

  Geoffrey answered, “I refuse to free him. I got him legally.”

  “It is a sin to keep him,” Abbot Bernard repeated.

  “If it is a sin to keep him, I refuse to be excused from that sin.” And with that Geoffrey turned his back on king, queen and abbot and stomped out of the room, pulling the steward behind him.

  Eleanor who had been sitting listlessly at the beginning of the interview came to attention. Geoffrey was a man she could understand. Geoffrey was a man like her father; he knew how to talk to an abbot. Talk back to an abbot.

  “Beware, Count of Anjou,” Bernard called after Geoffrey. “Beware what shall befall you.”

  Eleanor now looked more closely at Henry. Like father like son? She remembered hearing that when Abbot Bernard had looked at Henry when he was only an infant, the Abbot had said, “From the Devil he came and to the Devil he will go.” If Abbot Bernard had that to say about Henry, Eleanor could not but believe that here was a man she could love.

  Henry bowed out of the room, and shortly thereafter Eleanor asked to be excused.

  * * *

  Geoffrey and Henry were riding out of Paris when Eleanor’s messenger caught up with them; Eleanor wanted a meeting, alone. They met, Geoffrey, Henry and Eleanor; they met in a field outside of town, a place to which Eleanor could ride. Eleanor never looked better than when she was riding. The fresh air brought color to her face. Her color, her vitality, were no match for her years. Eleanor was now thirty. Henry was eighteen. But an older woman can bring important experience to a marriage contract. A lady’s age is never a measure of her youth. It did not matter, for example, that I was fifteen years older than my husband, Geoffrey the Fair.

  Eleanor was a woman who had seen the world and had profited by it. Henry was a man who could value her experience. I had taught him that. I had taught my son to surround himself with people of learning and experience. Louis was too thickheaded to use this valuable tool, this queen, this restless beauty, this Eleanor.

  They talked, the three of them. And they came to an agreement.

  * * *

  When Geoffrey reappeared at court a week
later and released the king’s steward, both the king and the abbot considered themselves very persuasive. After a few more days, they completed peace talks, and Geoffrey gave up the Vexin. The king and the abbot congratulated themselves again. Then Bernard lifted the ban of excommunication from Geoffrey, and the king accepted homage from Henry.

  Eleanor watched the homage ceremony. Henry knelt before his king, placed his hands in Louis’s palms, and swore to protect the king from his enemies. As Henry’s face peered over first one shoulder and then the other, receiving from Louis the kiss of peace, Henry smiled up at Eleanor. Eleanor winked. Geoffrey noticed. Abbot Bernard did not; King Louis did not; self-righteous people never looked beyond themselves for the reasons that things happen.

  2

  A FEVER KILLED my husband as he and Henry were returning from court. Abbot Bernard said that it was Divine Justice, but I don’t think it was. If Geoffrey were the sinner that Abbot Bernard believed him to be, why would he die after he had been restored to the Church? I did not believe Abbot Bernard. It was a fever, an accident, a trick of Fate, that killed my husband Geoffrey after he had made peace at the court of the Capets.

  3

  ON THE FIRST DAY of spring in the year 1152 Eleanor and Louis were separated. Eleanor felt that she was casting off two winters. Louis declared that he still loved her, but Abbot Bernard told the king that it was time for him to put aside his love for Eleanor; she had long ago put aside her love for him. Abbot Bernard reminded Louis that the best part of his marriage to Eleanor would stay with him; their daughters, Marie and Alix, were to remain in Paris. Abbot Bernard also reminded Louis that he had another love, his love of the Church, to substitute for his love of Eleanor; Eleanor, he said, had no love to substitute for him.

  Abbot Bernard did not know about Henry.

  He soon found out.

  Eleanor and Henry were married less than two months after Eleanor had received her separation.

  Bernard was shocked. The king was shamed. Abbot Bernard recommended excommunication. Louis’s advisers recommended war. After all, Eleanor was still Louis’s vassal, and as such, she had no right to marry without his consent. Louis listened to his advisers. He attempted an invasion of Normandy, his ex-wife’s new home.

  Henry swept them back like fuzz before a broom.

  “Ah,” Eleanor laughed when she heard the outcome of the battle, “a broom of Plantagenet sweeps clean.”

  Eleanor knew that at last she had a mate whose energy and decisiveness matched hers.

  4

  AND HENRY did not hesitate to use Eleanor as she wished to be used. He put her in charge of the lands that he could not directly supervise. He had some quarrels with his cousin Stephen, that worthless nephew of mine, who had stolen the throne from me. While he was in England settling feuds, Eleanor collected taxes and administered castles and dispensed justice in the courts of Normandy and Anjou as well as in her own Aquitaine.

  As Eleanor did all this, she also refurnished her castles with linens and embroideries and gold plate; she also provided a home for all the troubadours that Louis had banished from his realm. The courts of Eleanor as Duchess of Normandy and Aquitaine were beautiful and efficient. She wasted nothing that she learned. And to an ambitious, restless man like my son, she was an asset, the asset that Eleanor had always known she could be, given half a chance.

  She and Henry often went falconing together, they often held court together; they were suited to each other and to their times as no other couple in history.

  And they had a son. Eleanor regarded the birth of that first son as final evidence that she and Henry were right for each other and for Normandy, Anjou, and the Aquitaine, and when the time would come, they would be right for England.

  5

  THEN STEPHEN, my worthless nephew, who had taken the throne of England from me, died. Stephen had made his lords and barons agree to accept Henry as king. Of course, Stephen only did that because of constant pressure from me and only after his own greedy son, Eustace, had managed to choke to death on a plate of eels.

  Stephen had almost wrecked that fair island. And he would have if he had lived much longer, and if the English people were not of the common sense good stock that they are.

  “Just think!” Henry said. “We are married only a little more than two years, and I have made you a queen.”

  “Louis and I were married less than two weeks when he made me one,” Eleanor replied.

  “My family has a habit of holding onto its gains.”

  “Really, sir?” Eleanor said stepping up close to Henry.

  “Yes,” Henry answered. Then he grabbed Eleanor and hugged her so that she thought she would not emerge from his arms without several broken bones.

  But she did.

  Henry assembled men and ships and made ready to set sail across the English Channel to claim his crown. But the winter weather made passage difficult. Henry looked out at the English Channel as if it were a moat, meant to keep him out of his own castle.

  Day after day passed in that small harbor town as the men and ships waited. At every minute of every day, someone would be looking to see if the skies would clear, but they did not. The storms continued.

  At last Henry gave orders for everyone to man the boats. Fair weather or foul, he would cross the Channel; he had waited long enough. Henry thrust his fist into the air as if to punch the sky back and said, “Dear God, let us ride this storm together. England needs us.”

  Eleanor smiled. Henry’s prayers were like her father’s; both regarded God as a companion, and neither ever questioned His being on his side.

  The crossing was wretched, but Eleanor did not complain. She held their young son in her arms for the time it took to cross. When at last their tiny fleet came ashore on the English isle, the ships were scattered among the ports of the coast like billiard balls into various pockets.

  That their new king came to them through wind and storm did much to endear him to the people. They welcomed King Henry II and his Queen Eleanor.

  The coronation ceremony took place in Westminster Abbey in December. That great old church was another part of England that Stephen had allowed to go to ruin, so the ceremony, beautiful as it was, was like conducting a symphony in an abandoned stable.

  6

  ELEANOR AND I had no great love for each other. Two women cannot love the same man and also love each other. But Eleanor and I had respect for each other. Where love is not possible, respect will do. I admired Eleanor’s efficiency and her willingness to learn. No longer was she the ambitious, spoiled young Queen of the Franks. Now she was energetic, and her energies were well directed.

  Discomfort, bad weather, even pregnancy did not stop her. Eleanor bore eight children within the fifteen years I knew her. And of those, only the first, little William, died while I still lived. Even as she embarked on that rough Channel crossing, she was pregnant with their second child and second son; they named him Henry. Their next child they named for me: Matilda. Then followed Richard, whom everyone knows as Richard the Lion Heart. Geoffrey came a year later, followed by Eleanor, Joanna and finally John. John was the last of their children and the last of an era.

  An era. It was almost that. Eleanor and Henry squeezed a great deal of living into a single week, even into a single day. Since taxes were as often paid in merchandise as they were in money, Eleanor and Henry and the whole royal household often moved from one castle to another to use up their share of a manor’s profits. Barley, potatoes and cattle could not be mailed.

  And take the question of loyalty. Henry believed that people need to see who they are working for, fighting for. He must not merely be a name. He must be a face. (Doesn’t every corporation display pictures of its president, and doesn’t every government office in the United States have a picture of the President?) In those days there were no pictures, so the king and queen came in person. They held court, and at these courts they collected homage and taxes, but they also allowed people to tell their grievance
s.

  Eleanor knew people. She was a psychologist before there was even a word for it. She knew that if a man paid homage to someone who was magnificent, he thought better of himself than if he paid homage to someone who was simple. What she had begun to learn about impressing people in the Aquitaine, she had finished learning in Constantinople. But there was no pretense in her manners, for luxury was a necessity to Eleanor.

  She imported incense and burned it to do battle with the terrible odors that hugged the ground in London’s fog. She served wine at her table instead of beer. She furnished her castles with pillows stuffed with down and covered with silk, and she employed her beloved musicians and poets. She found the English a cheerful race, but plain. Good businessmen, but plain. Good storytellers, but plain. Eleanor followed her own sound aristocratic tastes, and the nation gratefully followed. Nothing in England has been the same since.

  But it was the matter of justice that kept the king and queen most busy, kept them most on the road, and often kept them in separate parts of the kingdom. Everyone was at war with everyone else. Robbers haunted the forests of Sherwood, and the legend of Robin Hood began. The law on one side of a road was different from the law on the other. The island was in chaos. It was my son’s job to pull it all together and to be clever about it. Henry did, and Henry was.

  There was an old law in England that allowed people to appeal to the king if they felt that justice had been denied them in the court of their lord. During the days of my worthless nephew, no one had dared appeal to the king, for Stephen was stupid and mean and would decide cases only as they suited him.

  Henry knew that he could not force people to appeal their cases to the king’s court. They had to want to, so he made his courts very attractive. A man would find fairer treatment in the king’s court than at any other. For one thing, Henry used a jury of witnesses. Trial by jury was better than trial by combat or trial by ordeal. What kind of a chance did a man have in a trial by ordeal? Throwing a bound man into a pond of water and claiming him guilty if he floated seemed to me more a matter of the man’s habits of eating than his habits with the law.