The Courts of Love: The Story of Eleanor of Aquitaine (23 page)

I said: “I believe you. You will ride beside me and lead us away from the ambush.”

So he did, and it was a pleasant experience for me because not only had I foiled the ambitions of Geoffrey Plantagenet but I was able to talk of my lover to one who knew him well.

There was no doubt that he idealized Henry. I was to discover that Henry had a certain quality which bound men to him. He was a born leader and never in the years to come did I doubt that.

The young man had been heartbroken when he had been assigned to the weak brother. He did not wish to serve Geoffrey Plantagenet, who was jealous of Henry and hated him. Their father, realizing the worth of Henry and the worthlessness of Geoffrey, had left the younger son only three castles.

“His father was a wise man,” I said.

“So I think, my lady, and when I heard that there was a plot to abduct you and force you to marry Geoffrey, I knew that was not what my lord Duke of Normandy would wish.”

“How right you were! I am grateful to you. I promise you that you shall stay in my household, and I think it very likely that I shall be able to persuade the Duke to give you back your place in his.”

How fortunate I was in that loyal servant of Henry’s. When we reached Poitiers in safety, the first thing I did was to send the young man with a message to Henry to tell him that I was in my capital city, awaiting the coming of my bridegroom.

What joy to be home! I should never feel toward any other place that which I felt for my native land. The people welcomed me. They rejoiced in the divorce. They had never liked to feel they were under the yoke of France.

They shouted their greetings; they cheered me. “Now Aquitaine will be the land of song again,” they said.

It seemed the whole world knew of the divorce. That troubled me not at all, but I did realize that my marriage to Henry must take place soon, for I had an idea that Louis would do everything he could to prevent it. The last husband he would have wanted for me would have been Henry. He would think, as all his ministers would: Anjou         .         .         .         Normandy         .         .         .         Aquitaine         .         .         .         that would make Henry almost as powerful as the King of France; and if he succeeded in taking the crown of England, he would be one of the most powerful rulers in Europe.

Louis, therefore, would be urged to prevent our marriage, which he might be able to do, because until Henry was King of England he was Louis’s vassal.

I wanted no hindrances. There had been enough of those. What I wanted was the ceremony to be over quickly. I wanted to be Henry’s wife at the earliest possible moment.

How wonderful it was to be once more in the Maubergeonne Tower. Memories of my grandfather came back to me. I thought: This will be once more the Court of Love.

I was a little pensive, for somehow I could not imagine Henry sitting on a cushion singing ballads. He never sat when he could stand; he was restless, a soldier, not a poet but a man of action. He was not gallant like my grandfather who had always known how to turn the gracious phrase; after all, he had been a poet of some standing. Henry was curt almost to the point of brusqueness; he did not pay compliments; one deduced from the intensity of his love-making that he found one desirable.

I would have to adjust my ideas to suit this most exciting of men, and this was what I would do. But even in the very depth of my obsession for him, I knew that I should always be myself, and that could not change for anyone         .         .         .         not even Henry.

There was a great deal to do. The French officials had left now, to the joy of the people. Aquitaine was mine to rule, and I must set about the task without delay. It was good for me to have so much to do, for the waiting was irksome. I appointed my advisers; there were many meetings with them. They must all swear fealty to me once again for I was now solely Duchess of Aquitaine in my own right and not Queen of France under the King.

I knew Henry would come as soon as he could. He would understand the need for speed. He wanted this marriage as much as I did. I would not allow myself to ask the question: Is it me he wants or Aquitaine? She was my rival, this beautiful country of mine. No one could assess me with her; but together we were the most desirable
partie
in Europe. I told myself I would not have had Henry indifferent to my possessions. He would have been a fool if he had been, and I was not a woman to tolerate fools.

Do not question, I admonished myself. Accept         .         .         .         and you will be the happiest woman on Earth.

At last he came. What a day that was! I saw his party in the distance, for I was ever watchful. So I was in the Courtyard to greet him. He leaped from his horse and lifted me in his arms, and I thought: This is the happiest moment of my life.

We must be alone together. We must make love. It had been so long that I had forgotten how exciting it was. He had arranged the wedding, which must take place without delay. He would not delay in any matter, I was to discover; and the wedding was no exception.

He was amused, guessing what a storm it would raise.

“At last you are free,” he said, “because of your close relationship with Louis. What of our relationship, my love?”

“I know,” I answered. “We are both descended from Robert of Normandy.”

“And not so far back! You and I are more closely related than you and Louis. There is a joke for you.”

“I know. I know.”

“And what will the King of France say when he hears you are married to me?”

“He will say         .         .         .         or his ministers will: ‘Anjou         .         .         .         Normandy         .         .         .         Aquitaine and possibly England.’”

“That is just what they will say, and they will be wrong with their ‘possibly England.’ It is going to be ‘certainly England.’”

“Of course.”

“I care not two bad pears for what Louis thinks.”

“Nor I. So why do we concern ourselves with him?”

“We shall not, though he could stop us if he tried. It’s this matter of suzerainty. So let us get the deed over with         .         .         .         quickly. That is my wish. Is it yours?”

“It is. Oh yes, it is.”

“Then so shall it be. We do not want a grand ceremony. I should not in any case. I hate prancing about in fancy costume like a play-actor. You will have to take me rough like this.”

“I’ll take you as you are,” I said.

“And you, my love, will have to be the elegant lady         .         .         .         but you are that without effort so I will accept it.”

And so we talked and planned; and on that May day of the year 1152 in my native city, without the pomp and ceremony which is usually such an important part of the proceedings when people like Henry and myself are united, we were married.

It was a wonderful day—less than two months after the divorce for which I had so craved—and I was happy.

We had a little respite before we should be caught up in what must inevitably follow. They were exciting days which passed all too quickly. I had been carried away by the magnetic and overwhelming personality of this man; I had thought of little else but him since I had first seen him. I knew he was a great man, and my instinct told me that his life would be eventful and triumphant. I had known soon after I saw him that, above all things, I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him.

During those days I began to learn something of the man beneath the faade, and gradually the true Henry began to emerge.

Henry’s Wife

T
HE TWO WEEKS WHICH
followed my wedding were the most exciting, surprising and revealing I had ever known. I was idyllically happy. I had the man I wanted. But it became clear to me during the days after our wedding that I had a great deal to learn about my husband. When there is such an all-consuming physical passion as there was with Henry and myself, although one seems to grasp in an instant that there is complete sexual harmony, one can be quite ignorant about the person involved. Blinded by physical demands, one ignores characteristics which would be obvious in others.

When I looked at him, with his square, thick-set figure made for agility rather than grace, his bow legs, his wide, thick feet, his close-cropped sandy-colored hair, his bullet-shaped head and his rough red hands, I marveled that I, who had been brought up in the most elegant of Courts, could have this feeling for him. His eyes were gray and rather prominent but they were quite beautiful in repose; but I was to see them raging in fury, and then they had quite a different aspect.

He was different from anyone I had ever known. He conformed to no pattern. He hardly ever sat still. He would wander about a room as he talked; there was no refinement in his speech; he never couched his expression in soft words; what he meant to convey came out bluntly, right to the point. He did not care to sit and eat in a civilized manner. He seemed to think it a waste of time. Food did not greatly interest him. It was something one must take for nourishment, and that was all it meant to him. I did not then ask myself why he had captivated me; during those two weeks when we were together every minute of the night and day I was obsessed by him.

He was well educated—his parents had taken care of that—and he was fond of learning. He had read a great deal, which amazed me in one so active. But as long as he was doing something which seemed to him worthwhile he was contented; and reading must have seemed that.

He had little admiration for poets and minstrels and regarded them with a certain contempt. When I look back, it seems to me that, if I could have chosen someone as completely different from myself as possible, I might have chosen Henry.

How we talked during those blissful days. He told me a great deal about his parents. There was no doubt that he had a great affection and admiration for his mother, the forceful Empress Matilda. He was proud of her although she did fail so dismally to regain her kingdom.

“It was hers by right,” he said. “Was she not the daughter of the King? Stephen had no right to take England from her. She should have been Queen.”

“I should have thought the people would have rallied to her,” I replied. “Was it because she was a woman that they turned to Stephen?”

“No. Stephen is as weak as water         .         .         .         but he has charm. He is affable. He is approachable. He smiles on them and they like him, in spite of the fact that he is ruining their country. Matilda         .         .         .         well, she is a haughty woman. She cannot forget that she was Empress of Germany. The English do not like her manner.”

“Did she not see that she was spoiling her chances?”

“My mother is not a woman to take advice. Her life has not been easy. She was five years old when she was sent to Germany to marry the Emperor. He was thirty years older than she. There she was made much of, spoiled for discipline forevermore: She was unprepared for what was to follow; and when he died and she was brought home, she was twenty-three years old. She clung to the title of Empress—indeed, she still calls herself Empress now and insists that others do. She is a very forceful woman, my mother; and when at the age of twenty-five she was married to my father, she considered him far beneath her. She was ten years older than he, and she despised the boy of fifteen who was descended from the Counts of Anjou—who in their turn were descended from the Devil. Imagine it. Poor Mother.”

“Since she is so forceful, the daughter of a King and the widow of an Emperor, I wonder she did not refuse to marry him.”

“Her father was even more forceful. Matilda wanted the throne, so she was obliged to submit. For years she would have little to do with my father. She despised him and let him know it. Then after about six years she decided to do her duty and I was born. A year after me there was Geoffrey and after him William. So at length she produced the three of us.”

“You are fond of her and were fond of your father too.”

“They both did their best for me, but we boys were brought up in a Court where there was continual strife. I have never known two people to hate each other as they did.”

“Perhaps it has made you strong.”

In turn I told him of my childhood, of those first five years spent in my grandfather’s Court. I told of the
jongleurs
and their songs which enlivened the long evenings while the fires glowed and the light was dim. I told him of my bold grandfather and Dangerosa, and the miracle which Bernard had conjured up to show my father the error of his ways.

He told me of the beautiful woman who had wandered into his ancestor’s castle and so charmed him that he married her, and how sons were born to her, how she always made excuses why she could not go to church and one day when she was prevailed upon to do so, she was confronted by the Host and suddenly disappeared and was never seen again.

“This is the story which gives rise to the legend,” he said. “They say the woman came from Satan and that we Angevins are the spawn of the Devil.”

“Am I to believe that?”

“You will discover,” he replied.

They were wonderful days which I wanted to go on forever, but of course they could not. He was restless; he had lands to conquer. I should have to wait for these periods when we could be together. I told myself that they would be the more precious because I had to wait for them.

Henry had placed people all over France and England. He said that if one was going to take the right action one must know what the enemy planned. He must have as much information as possible. It was from one of his men that we heard about the reaction to our marriage at the French Court.

Louis had rarely been so startled.

How blind he was! He had seen me with Henry. Had he not noticed that overwhelming attraction between us? Of course he had not. What did Louis know of such emotion?

He was incensed. He and I had been divorced because of the closeness of our relationship and I had immediately married someone who was even closer. It was a blatant disregard for decency, the Church and the crown of France. Why, when it had been suggested that my elder daughter should marry Henry Plantagenet, this had been rejected because of the closeness of their blood, and now I, the mother, had the effrontery to marry the man myself.

The marriage must be dissolved at once.

Henry and I laughed at the idea. In our eyes, we were ideally suited and nothing on Earth was going to separate us.

We heard that, shocked beyond measure by this “incestuous union,” many of the French nobles were assembling at Court. Naturally, rejected suitors such as Geoffrey of Blois and Geoffrey Plantagenet raged in their indignation—although why the latter should complain of the blood tie between his brother and me when he was ready to commit the incestuous sin himself needs a little explanation.

The fact remained that they were gathering against Henry.

A messenger arrived at Poitiers. As Louis’s vassals, Henry and I were to present ourselves to him to answer the charges against us.

Henry snapped his fingers at that. “Louis will have to stop thinking of me as a vassal,” he said.

But when he had news from his spies that Louis was planning an attack, he was alert. He was not sure where the attack would come from. Aquitaine would be faithful, we knew; but Normandy was less secure. His brother Geoffrey was a traitor and there was nothing he would like better than to see Normandy wrested from Henry, of whom he had always been intensely jealous.

“I must go to Normandy without delay,” said Henry. “You will be able to hold Aquitaine.”

I knew he was right. The honeymoon was over.

This was the kind of life to which I must become accustomed. I must not complain. Now it was my task and great desire to prove to him that he really could rely on me in all things.

So we said goodbye and Henry rode away. I must fortify my castle and make my people aware of the French threat.

They were loyal to me—the more so because Henry was not here. They made it clear that they would fight for me, their Duchess, for I was their ruler, but they did not owe the loyalty to my consort that they owed to me.

I accepted that. In a way I was pleased by it. I had learned enough of Henry to know that he considered himself the master of all about him, and that included me. That was something I should have to teach him was not the case. I would do it gently, of course, but no man, not even Henry, was going to subdue me.

In our passionate moments he had murmured that he had never known a woman like me. He would have to remember that. No matter what power he had had over members of my sex in the past, no matter if it was the way of the world that men should rule, it should not happen with Eleanor of Aquitaine.

So in my fortress I waited while a watch was kept for the approach of the French.

Nothing happened. I knew Louis’s reluctance to go to war and I am sure that a war against me would have an even greater repugnance for him. I heard he had turned his forces toward Normandy and there was no sign of hostility toward Aquitaine.

I thought a great deal about Louis’s campaigns. Had there ever been one which was successful? It was hard to remember. Poor Louis, doomed to failure. What hope had he against a shrewd strategist like Henry?

News came of the progress of the battle. Henry was winning everywhere. I was amused to hear that his truculent little brother Geoffrey had now lost the three castles which had been left to him and caused such a grievance.

It was not long before Louis and his pathetic attempts at war were completely routed. Henry was victorious: Normandy was safe; and Henry returned to Poitou.

How happy we were to be together!

“It is good that this happened,” said Henry. “It will teach Louis a lesson. He will not wish to meddle in my affairs again in a hurry.”

He was delighted with all I had done. I could see that he thought our marriage a real success since we could work so well in unison.

I told him that Aquitaine must be wooed. The people were completely loyal to me, but they had never taken kindly to Louis and I wanted them to feel differently about Henry. He saw that I was right.

I said: “We should make a tour of the country. We should stay in the castles. You must get to know them and let them see that this marriage of ours is a good one for them as well as us.”

He told me that England was very much on his mind. Stephen might not live much longer and when the time came he must be ready.

“Eustace will not meekly stand aside.”

“I do not think the people will want him.”

“Let us talk of these things while we are making our journey through my country.”

And this was what we did.

My people were wary of him, but it was heartening to see the enthusiasm with which they greeted me. They loved me. When I rode among them in my silk and velvet gown, with my hair flowing about my shoulders, they were enchanted. Henry, however, square and stocky, somewhat inelegant, was not their idea of the romantic lover; he did not match the heroes of the ballads they loved to sing; he was not the kind for whom lovesick maidens sigh.

Moreover, he was impatient. The nights we spent at the various castles brought no joy to him. He found it irksome to have to sit still so long. I was disturbed because I knew that, in spite of our passionate relationship, he wanted to be away in England.

The fact was that my people did not take to this uncouth man who had married their Duchess, but I did not know how greatly they resented him until we came to Limoges, where I saw a side to his nature which gave me twinges of alarm. We did not go into the town but encamped outside. This was a pity for if we had not done this, the trouble might not have arisen.

We had had a long day and were hungry. The cook came to me and told me in great distress that the town would provide no food for us.

Henry was present. “And pray why not?” he demanded. “And who has said this?”

“It was one of the servants of the castellan, my lord.”

“Bring him here to me this moment.”

The man was brought and stood trembling before Henry’s wrath.

Henry had changed. His eyes were bulging; they were wild. I had never seen him like that before.

“What does this mean?” he demanded.

“My lord,” stammered the man, “my master has said that the town of Limoges is not obliged to supply food to those encamped outside its walls.”

“Does your master know who comes?”

“Yes. It is the Duchess and her husband.”

That added to Henry’s rage. Not the Duke and the Duchess, but the Duchess and her husband. It was how they regarded him. He thought this a slight to him—which it was probably intended to be.

I could well believe in that moment that he had the Devil’s blood in him. His face was purple, his bulging eyes blazing with fury.

He strode out of the tent. I heard him shouting orders. I did not know at once what those orders were but when I did I was appalled.

The walls of the town were to be razed to the ground and the newly built bridge destroyed. In future when the
Duke
and the Duchess of Aquitaine visited the town of Limoges there would he no insolent men to deny them hospitality because they had encamped
outside
their walls.

I suppose I could have countermanded the order. What if I had? What would have happened? What would he have ordered
me
to do? I was too stunned to act. I did nothing to stop the orders being carried out.

I thought afterward: Suppose I had given orders that it was not to be done. There would have been war, I was sure         .         .         .         war between my people and my husband, and I should have stood with
them.