Since I feel a need to sing,
I shall write a poem of sorrow;
never again will I be love’s slave
in Poitou or in Limousin.
ELEANOR SANG ALOUD THE words of the song composed by her grandfather.
How the road to Poitiers rang out so melodiously beneath her palfrey’s hooves. How the June air she breathed, the balmy sunlit Poitevin air, how deliciously scented and sweet it felt. All around her the countryside bloomed: the pink and blue and yellow wild-flowers by the roadside, the tender green leaves that adorned the trees, the grassy meadows that formed the gentle landscape of Poitou.
Behind her she could hear the steady pace of her entourage—Norman knights, carts, grooms, sumpter horses, female attendants in the litter in which she, herself, had started out the journey from Normandy. Eleanor had wanted her sister to accompany her, but Petronilla, who had taken refuge in a convent several years after her husband’s death, had turned her back on the things of this world.
With regret—she would miss her—Eleanor pushed all thoughts of her sister aside. She was too excited to feel sorrowful, just as she was too impatient to be enclosed by the cumbersome litter. In truth, she would have liked to set a faster pace on her palfrey, jump the roadside hedges, and gallop away across the verdant grass, the breeze at her back, embraced by the warm sun of Aquitaine.
Domfront, Le Mans, Angers, Touraine, then crossing the Loire. The road to Fontevrault over on the right, following the Vienne River by Chinon, Châtellerault—all had formed the various stages of her journey. Like a pilgrimage through the past, journeying back through the scenes of her life. At each stage she had shed another title, another responsibility, another identity. Queen of England; countess of Anjou and Maine; duchess of Normandy—all were left behind along with Henry, her children, and the whole tumultuous mélange of court intrigue, politics, power, and ambition.
Of course Eleanor knew that she must return. Love, honor, responsibility, and the siren call to once again take her place in that intoxicating world where men and kingdoms were made and lost, would lure her back. But now she needed to replenish herself, nourish her roots at the wellspring of her beloved Aquitaine.
She had left Henry desolate, so he said, at the loss of both his right and left arms—Thomas Becket and herself—when, in truth, he had lost neither. He had wept, thrown a tantrum, begged and threatened. After sharing a night of passionate love he would not soon forget, Eleanor thought with satisfaction, she had simply departed.
By this time, she had no doubt, Henry would be happily creating new laws, hatching new plots to acquire yet more land and more subjects. He would be pondering what kings and emperors to ensnare in his web as potential husbands for his daughters to marry. It would not even surprise her to learn that he had a new intrigue afoot to install some tame prelate of his into the papacy! And, of course, he would be mourning her absence at the same moment he was lustfully eyeing some lovely young damsel.
She would never change him.
But Eleanor knew that she had come to terms with the way things stood. To transform what she could, and accept Henry and her life for what they were. Both enemy and lover, friend and foe, sometimes rivals in power—she knew Henry loved her in the ways that he was capable of loving, as much as she loved him.
So long as she never lost sight of herself, who and what she was, and had been, she would survive with good grace.
A group of Poitevins trudged by—women, children, and men. One old grandfather led a mule laden with pannier baskets filled with chickens, eggs, and white cheeses. They all drew aside to let her party pass.
“Wait!” One of the group called out.
Eleanor drew rein and turned her head.
“By St. Radegonde, it do be the duchess Eleanor!”
“Our duchess! Welcome, welcome!”
The Poitevins crowded around her palfrey, doffing their caps, grinning with pleasure, grasping her hands, lifting small children so they could see her, some even trying to kiss the hem of her purple cloak.
She was conscious of a great sense of joy. What remained of the present burden of power and love, the uncertainties of the future, were lifted at a single stroke.
Eleanor of Aquitaine had come home.