FOR ELEANOR, THE NEXT few months slipped by in a flurry of preparation for the war in Toulouse. First Henry solicited contributions from towns, sheriffs, moneylenders, even the Church. Anticipating an outcry, he ordered Thomas Becket personally to collect from the abbeys. In the spring, Henry issued a summons to his vassals in England, Normandy, and Aquitaine to assemble at Poitiers by the end of June. He then went to Paris, confident Louis of France would support him. But, to Eleanor’s consternation, Louis was noncommital. The count of Toulouse was his vassal; his sister’s safety was involved. He preferred to remain a bystander.
“What is Louis up to?” Eleanor asked Henry the day after he had returned from Paris. “I don’t trust him.” For the first time she was experiencing a niggle of doubt about this enterprise. “He should support you, not remain aloof. This holier-than-thou attitude is typical of him. Does he forget his disastrous attempt to take Toulouse eighteen years ago?”
Henry shrugged. “What does it matter? He hasn’t said anything either way and in his case a wink’s as good as a nod. I’ve an unbroken string of victories to my credit. Toulouse will be no different.”
Nor could Eleanor see any reason why Toulouse would be different, yet Louis’s apparent unwillingness to take sides continued to trouble her. She insisted on accompanying Henry on the campaign and he agreed.
On a day in late June, Henry’s army left Poitiers. His brilliant host included not only barons from his own domains but the king of Scotland, the count of Barcelona, and several of the count of Toulouse’s dissatisfied vassals. By early July they had encamped outside Toulouse’s walls and settled in for a long siege.
Henry, as usual, had brought his clerks, and, with Eleanor’s help, busied himself with the constant administrative chores of his empire: issuing writs, reading over judicial cases, and even listening to those subjects persistent enough to follow him to the gates of Toulouse.
In September, Louis revealed his true colors.
He suddenly appeared before the city gates, unattended by troops or guards. Like a penitent, he humbly asked permission to enter the city to safeguard his sister. Had she been present, Eleanor knew, she would have seen through this ploy. But she had gone to Foix for two days to visit a distant relative. When she returned, she found, to her horror, that Louis had been allowed to enter the city, and Henry was planning to call off the siege.
“But you cannot do that,” she said, unable to believe either that Louis had been so wily or Henry so willing to back down. “To have come this far for nothing—no, you must go through with it.”
“How can I? Louis is my overlord. If I attack him, what sort of example do I set for my own vassals?”
Thomas, an unlikely ally, sided with her for the first time. Having brought along seven hundred knights of his own household—which indicated the size and wealth of his own establishment—Eleanor suspected that Thomas hoped to make a great military showing. It was becoming more and more obvious that the chancellor thought himself a great baron, preferring to forget he was ever an archdeacon in holy orders.
“Louis has aligned himself with your enemies and deserves no consideration, Sire,” Thomas said. “You will be the laughingstock of all Europe if you end the siege now. Everyone will say Louis has outwitted you.”
“Not in my presence, they won’t.” Henry’s face grew purple, and Eleanor expected that any moment now he would fall on the floor of the pavilion in one of his uncontrollable rages.
To her surprise he did not lose control, but she could tell that he was adamant, and argument was useless. In some way she had never been able to grasp, Henry had developed a curious affection for Louis whom, by turns, he had outfought, outwitted, yet made friends with. Why he would throw away all his advantages on the threshold of a successful siege was beyond her comprehension.
“We will never again have this chance,” she said. “We will have lost Toulouse forever.” That dull, pious Louis should have been the cause of this loss was like gall and wormwood in her heart.
“We? We? I never wanted it!” Henry shouted. “You wanted it, you gulled me into it! This whole thing was your idea from first to last. Did I not say right from the start that this was a foolhardy venture?”
Eleanor was taken aback. So he did remember where the idea had originated—when it suited him. He had said the venture was foolhardy, but not with any great seriousness, as she recalled.
Henry threw his sword on the ground, kicked several shields across the floor, then stomped out of the pavilion. Thomas followed on his heels, still urging him to continue the siege. Outside, she could hear raised voices as Henry and his chancellor got into a heated argument, the only serious breach between them that Eleanor could remember.
Although Henry was hungry for power, she had long suspected that he had no real taste for bloodshed or war, preferring to win by other means, if possible. Even worse than the loss of Toulouse was the fact that it should be Louis who had shown her husband to be less than invincible. It was the first visible chink in Henry’s armor.
Five months later, back in Poitiers, Henry pounded the table with an iron fist. Silver bowls rattled and the salt cellars fell over. “Raze the viscount’s castle.”
Eleanor gasped aloud. “Henry, you cannot mean—”
“Oh, but I do mean,” he said, raising his voice so it could be heard by everyone seated in the great hall of the Maubergeonne Tower on this unseasonably warm evening in late February. “I said raze the castle and I mean just that.”
A tense silence fell over the assembled crowd of Aquitainian vassals, barons, and prelates. Six Norman knights seated at the high table immediately rose to their feet.
“God’s eyes, not this instant, you hotheads.”
The knights resumed their seats.
“But this lord has not deserved such treatment,” Eleanor said. Her heart hammered against her ribs as she strove to keep her voice steady, her demeanor calm. “You have already ejected him from his lands at Thouars.”
Henry, his face set, did not reply. She saw his eyes rove distastefully over the platters of boiled carp, pike, roasted wildfowl, pheasant, and partridge. He plunged his dagger into a silver bowl set in the middle of the high table, and speared a piece of fish awash in a thick sauce. He gazed at it suspiciously, then sniffed it, like a wary hound nosing at a carcass.
“I don’t care for the smell of this.”
“All the fish on the table were freshly caught this morning or yesterday. Those stewed lampreys were just made.”
He threw the offending piece of eel to a foraging hound. “I won’t touch lampreys, Nell. You know that.”
Henry’s grandfather had died as a result of eating stewed lampreys. Of course she knew that Henry refused to eat the dish. How could she have neglected to remind the steward? Like everything else she had done since leaving Toulouse, she could not seem to put a foot right.
“I’m sorry, Henry. It slipped my mind.”
He nodded, finally cutting himself a leg of wildfowl cloaked with fried parsley.
“My dear, please,” she said, picking up the threads of their discussion. “Won’t you listen to reason?” Aware of every eye fixed upon them, Eleanor lowered her voice. “Such an act against the viscount will only create more strife among my vassals.”
“Your vassals, Madam? I thought they were mine.”
How could she have been so tactless? “Our vassals, naturally.”
Eleanor’s stomach plummeted. He was going to continue being difficult, as he had been ever since they had left Toulouse. In truth, whenever they made a progress through Aquitaine, Henry was apt to be difficult, but this time he seemed compelled to exercise his authority with increasing force—as though trying to prove something to himself after having backed down before Louis of France. Although, despite her initial objection she had not continued to reproach him, Eleanor knew he sensed her withdrawal. It was unjust, perhaps, and not deserved, but she couldn’t help it. Henry had allowed Louis of France to get the better of him and his golden luster had slightly dimmed. Now he was making Aquitaine pay for it.
In Limoges, where they had just spent the better part of a week, he had made the young baronial heir his ward, then turned over the reins of administration to two Normans. Didn’t he understand that appointing outsiders to important posts only reinforced her vassals’ opposition? In Bordeaux he had accepted the homage of her vassals to himself and their sons, Henry and Richard, then taken hostages to guarantee the vassals’ fidelity, a clear sign of how little he trusted them.
Visits to her duchy were infrequent, which caused Eleanor much sorrow; on the other hand, Aquitaine always proved such a source of friction between herself and Henry that perhaps it was just as well. There had been a time when she hoped they might live for long periods of time in her beloved domains. But it was now painfully evident that she would never be able to live in Aquitaine with Henry.
“More strife hardly seems possible considering the disorders that constantly beset Aquitaine,” Henry continued. “England, Normandy, and Anjou are under my control. Your duchy alone continues to be a source of unrest.” He finished chewing the wildfowl and began to pick his teeth with the point of his knife. “My policies, my reforms—everything I’ve done with great success in other parts of my realm—is unsuccessful here. Every region in Aquitaine is suspicious of every other region. The Gascons mistrust the Poitevins; the Poitevins look down on the folk of Limoges, and so on. No one part of Aquitaine agrees with any other part.”
Was this any different from how the Welsh felt about the English, or how the English regarded the Scots? Eleanor wished she dare say what was in her heart: There is one thing everyone in Aquitaine does agree on—their resentment of you and your attempts to curtail their independence.
How many times had she told him that, since time out of mind, the dukes of Aquitaine had tried to institute a central form of control over the turbulent duchy—all to no avail. Again and again she had urged a loose rein, a benign presence, a willingness to allow authority to rest with the local lords—this was the only way. But now, smarting under his recent lack of achievement, Henry refused to listen.
“Not to mention those that don’t agree with the doctrine of Holy Church, Sire,” said Thomas Becket. “Heresies run rife here. Provençal society in particular is a breeding ground for every spiritual plague imaginable.”
Eleanor bristled. This was Bernard of Clairvaux and Abbé Suger all over again. “What exactly do you mean by that? Aquitainians are all Christians. A few minor deviations here and there do not mean they worship the devil.”
“Minor deviations?” The chancellor sent her a withering look. “One is either a true believer in the Faith, a heretic, or an infidel. Arabs, Jews, and Cathars abound in this duchy. The Albigensians, some of whose leaders, I understand, are actually women—” he glanced pointedly at Eleanor—“make many converts, I’ve heard, even among the nobles. What says Holy Writ? ‘He who is not with me is against me.’ ”
Henry shrugged dismissively. Although Eleanor suspected that despite his apparent disdain for religious matters Henry strongly favored orthodoxy, he was not of a mind to suppress heretical cults or persecute Arabs or Jews so long as they did not openly oppose his policies.
“The Cathars and others do not pose a threat, Henry,” she said quickly, ignoring Becket.
“I never said they did. But your vassals do. God’s eyes!” He glowered. “You ask me to listen to reason. Do your vassals behave reasonably?”
She could not deny that all too frequently they behaved either like witless dolts or reckless barbarians.
“Henry, I realize what you are trying to do here and I support your efforts, you know I do. But to bring all these disparate elements under one central authority will take time. These nobles and their ancestors have done as they pleased for three hundred years. It is bred in the bone. I beg of you, do not move hastily.”
Henry glanced at her. She gave him a winning smile while her eyes implored him. After a moment he sighed impatiently and stuck his knife into the wood of the table; the blade quivered back and forth.
“All right. All right!” He looked around the table and threw up his hands. “I ask you, how can you deny a woman anything when she looks at you like that?” There was a murmur of tentative laughter. “The castle will not be razed—at this time.”
Eleanor let out her breath in a long sigh, knowing she dared not argue further now. At least she had bought her vassal a reprieve. Not that the arrogant fool deserved it.
Down the table there was a discreet cough. “Ah, Majesty, if I may remind you?” Thomas Becket slid his eyes sideways toward Eleanor. “This vassal of the queen’s,” he emphasized the word queen’s, “this vassal has long been a troublemaker in the duchy. It might be well to recall that he sided with your late brother, when Geoffrey attempted to rebel against you.”
“By God, that’s right! I’d forgotten.”
“If you fail to make an example of him it will be said you are no longer master here. After Toulouse, Sire, it would be unwise …”
“You’re right, Thomas.” Henry fixed Eleanor with a hard look. “The viscount’s castle must be razed, Nell. There’s an end to it.”
Eleanor saw a brief smile cross the chancellor’s face. At this moment her hatred of him was so intense she almost choked on the carp she was chewing. Thomas Becket, without whose advice Henry would not make any important decision, was a constant intruder, his dark shadow continually falling between herself and her husband, deliberately sowing discord between them.
Eleanor had come to terms with the dominating influence of Henry’s mother, but this friendship with Becket was altogether different. The empress, however grudgingly, fully acknowledged Eleanor’s role in Henry’s life. But in his covert way, as in the matter of the Pipe Roll and now, not to mention countless others, Thomas sought to undermine and exclude her.
Although, on occasion, Eleanor was still able to influence Henry, she could never control him as she had Louis, even without Becket. She was wise enough now to know that she had as much chance of harnessing a thunderbolt. When Eleanor remembered her early conversation with Master André before her marriage, how, in their innocence, they had both thought she could mold the young duke, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
The bitter truth was that, thus far, she had gained neither the influence nor power that was her due. In principle she was supposed to be regalis imperii participes, a sharer in the kingship. In truth, she was given the illusion of power but none of the substance. These same thoughts which had occurred to her in England kept returning again and again with increased intensity.
England, of course, was not hers. But Aquitaine was another story. Here she was still duchess-regnant, and her authority should reign supreme. Of course she had spent the last five years bearing children; yet that aside, if it weren’t for Chancellor Thomas Becket, Eleanor felt she might have achieved an almost equal position without poaching on Henry’s prerogatives. Neither Abbé Suger nor even Bernard of Clairvaux had proved so redoubtable a rival. She picked up her goblet of wine then arrested it halfway to her lips. A chill ran down her spine. Rival? Why did she always fall back on that bizarre choice of word? As though Thomas were an actual contender for Henry’s affections. Like the unknown Bellebelle.
The royal party was due to leave Poitou the following day. For the first time, Eleanor was anxious to be gone. She could no longer bear the reproachful glances of her vassals and knights, no longer endure the feeling of helplessness that oppressed her in the overwrought atmosphere of Poitiers.
Later that evening her uncle Ralph de Faye, seneschal of Aquitaine, came to the chamber where Eleanor had just finished putting Richard and Henry to bed.
“The Plantagenet is becoming more high-handed each time I see him,” Ralph said.
“It is the chancellor’s fault this time, not Henry’s.” Her uncle always referred to Henry as “the Plantagenet,” no matter how many times Eleanor corrected him. “Sometimes I wonder if I haven’t lost my duchy altogether. My marriage, my children, my crown—I have paid a great price for them, Uncle.”
Ralph took her hands in his. “You can never lose Aquitaine, for that would be like losing your very soul. In truth, you have done remarkably well balancing the duchy, your motherhood, your responsibilities, and your husband—your love for him still burns as brightly as ever?”
“Brighter.”
“Well, that is something—for you. It was not too long ago that if someone had told me the frivolous, spoiled coquette of Aquitaine would become the woman of substance you now are—I would not have believed him.” Ralph shook his head. “And the Plantagenet cares as well, though he attempts to hide it with his overbearing manner. At first I thought he had married you only to possess the duchy, but over time I’ve come to see there’s far more to it than that.”
Ralph strode over to the bed and gazed down at the sleeping faces of her two sons. Eleanor followed him.
“What do you mean?”
“I am not sure myself. Only, perhaps, that to a man like the Plantagenet, love is an adversary to be conquered, not a pleasure to be courted and enjoyed.” He shook his head. “Idle words. They mean nothing.”
Eleanor brushed a golden ringlet from Richard’s creamy brow. “Since Toulouse Henry has certainly been more hostile—” She stopped. The incident with the Empress Maud and the wild talk of crowning young Henry passed through her mind.
Even before Toulouse Henry had not been himself, she realized, behaving with more antagonism, even falling into one of his wild rages in Le Mans over nothing at all. She had to confide in someone. It was no longer possible to keep her thoughts and feelings contained. Eleanor hesitated. Ralph de Faye was not the most trustworthy of men but he had proved loyal to her and to his post. If she did not speak she would go from her wits.
In a lowered voice she told Ralph about the entry in the Pipe Roll and the Empress Maud’s initial reaction to her own grandson.
Ralph said nothing for a moment. When he did speak Eleanor had the feeling that he chose his words with care.
“There was talk at one time—oh, many years ago now, before you married Louis—that the empress would sooner have had Stephen of Blois as her paramour rather than her enemy. Even talk that the heir of Anjou was Stephen’s son—not that anyone believed such far-fetched rumors.”
Eleanor was dumbstruck. “I never heard such tales, nor can I credit them.” Her head whirling, what she did not say was that this rumor would explain why Count Geoffrey left Anjou to his second son should Henry inherit England, as well as the empress’s reaction to a grandson that resembled Stephen.
“Pure speculation, after all,” Ralph said, with a dismissive shrug. “Put no stock in it. I find it hard to believe this the cause of the Plantagenet’s ill temper. He must have heard the rumors before now. Why would they disturb him at this late date?” Ralph shook his head. “Nor does it signify one way or another as far as Aquitaine is concerned. What does signify is the chancellor’s influence as opposed to yours.”
“He will advise anything that makes less of my authority in the duchy. Sweet St. Radegonde, how I hate him,” Eleanor burst out.
Ralph put a finger to his lips, indicating the women in a far corner of the chamber. “Prudence. Prudence. At the moment you can do nothing about him, Niece.”
He left the bedside and walked over to the casement window. Eleanor followed.
“My hatred for—that person is only equaled by his hatred of me,” she said. “He is highly dangerous—not just to Aquitaine but to my welfare. He wanted me to see that entry in the Pipe Roll.”
“I don’t dispute that.” Ralph threw a quick glance toward the women, their heads together, busily working on a square of tapestry. “Do not let him bait you. What does it matter if the Plantagenet dallies here and there? Turn a blind eye—as my mother—your grandmother, Dangereuse, did. The Troubadour always came back to her in the end. By allowing him his freedom she bound him with threads of steel.”
“I will try to do that, Uncle. In truth, what disturbs me most is that Henry and Beck—that person are bosom companions in the business of the kingdom, in riding, hunting, hawking—there is little they do not do together except bed! He has cast some sort of spell over my husband, who consults him on everything. It’s intolerable.”
Ralph sent her a sharp glance. “Henry honors your bed as regularly as ever?”
“Of course.” Eleanor gave him a puzzled look.
“Then our friend does not have what he wants the most. Rest content.”
Speechless, Eleanor stared at her uncle. “You mean—? Uncle, you cannot expect me to believe—” She simply could not accept what he was implying. “It’s impossible. You must be mistaken.”
“Perhaps. But the signs are all there.” Ralph laughed and shook his head. “I would never have believed you to be so innocent, so unworldly. Truly, you never once suspected?”
“Never. But Henry—”
“Undoubtedly ignorant of his chancellor’s hidden tastes, which I’m quite certain will never be revealed. Even to himself he may not admit they exist—though I suspect he knows. So you see there is an underlying reason for his enmity toward you.”
Eleanor was astounded. It was the last thing she would ever have imagined, and it certainly gave her a rather different view of the situation. It would explain her jealousy, why she felt Becket was a rival. Always supposing her flamboyant uncle was correct in what he surmised, of course.
Ralph, who had been watching her, chuckled softly. “You must be more observant. Keep your eyes open to what is going on around you, not fixed on the Plantagenet like a besotted maid.” He wagged a cautionary finger. “Bide your time, Niece. You must be clever enough never to act precipitously toward Becket. Impetuous action has been the downfall of the dukes of Aquitaine for centuries. But women have always known how to wait. Mark my words, one day he will overreach himself. Your hour will come.” He reached out and squeezed her hand. “Meanwhile do nothing rash. You have Aquitaine to think of.”
When had she ever thought of anything else? Eleanor wondered. She had just learned two things of vital interest: Becket’s predilection for Henry; the Empress Maud’s dark secret—if both were even true. She turned them over in her mind. If Henry were not Geoffrey’s legitimate son he never would have been permitted to inherit either Anjou or the English crown. Suppose his bastardy were discovered at a later date? Could an annointed king be dethroned? She did not know. Certainly, his children would be tainted by illegitimacy. It was extremely doubtful if they would be permitted to inherit the English crown—the freewheeling days of the Conqueror were long gone, and Holy Church would no longer support the issue of a bastard. Henry’s enemies, what remained of the adherents of the House of Blois, and others, would not fail to seize the moment and turn it to their own advantage. Eleanor realized that she did not know the actual legalities that pertained in such a situation, and it was far too dangerous to ask. Not that legalities would matter. Just the rumor, widely circulated, would be sufficient to create havoc.
The resulting scandal could rock the House of Normandy to its foundations. The House of Aquitaine would be equally affected. Would her people accept a misbegotten duke—or one of his sons as future duke? At the very least, there would most certainly be more outbreaks of rebellion, unrest, uprisings in Aquitaine, perhaps in Anjou as well, even another civil war in England. The implications of Henry not being the count of Anjou’s legitimate son were so overwhelming they boggled the mind; Eleanor rejected the possibility as being too preposterous, the result of her upset with Henry, her resentment of Becket, a figment of her fevered imagination. She must have been mad to have ever seriously considered such an outlandish idea.
However, should there ever come a time when, her back against the wall, her duchy’s survival at stake, she, personally, needed a weapon with which to protect herself, another string to her bow, as it were … not that she ever would, of course, still …
She smiled at her uncle. “No. I will do nothing rash.”