AT ABOUT THE TIME that Eleanor gave birth to her first son, William, a son had been born to an English woman of the streets, called Ykenai. According to Master Walter Map, an archdeacon of Oxford in the twelfth century, she “was a common harlot who stooped to all uncleanness,”* and, in Map’s opinion, had conned Henry into believing the child his. “Without reason and with too little discernment,”** says Map, Henry accepted the child as his own and called him Geoffrey.
It is also a matter of record that early in Henry’s reign, Eleanor accepted the boy into her own household. No reason is given.
This is all that is known of Ykenai. In the Pipe Rolls of Henry’s reign (some years later than I have depicted it in the novel), there appears the entry: “For clothes and hoods and cloaks and for the trimming of two capes of samite and for the clothes of the Queen and Bellebelle, for the King’s use … by the King’s writ.” There has been speculation that “Bellebelle” was the king’s mistress. I put the two—whore and mistress—together to create the character in the novel.
Henry II showed great favor to the illegitimate Geoffrey (whose fortunes will be detailed in Book II of the story of Henry and Eleanor). An additional note, and I quote from Harlots, Whores and Hookers, a history of prostitution by Hilary Evans: “It was, extraordinarily, in England, that the earliest European laws aimed at regulation rather than suppression were formulated. The regulations passed by Henry II … to control conduct in the stews of London’s Bankside are a key document in the history of the subject.”
Speculation regarding a whore/mistress whose son was raised in the royal household, coupled with a set of laws regulating the notorious Bankside brothels, resulted in the fictional character of Belle-belle.
Additional note: Gropecuntlane actually existed.
*Walter Map. De Nugis Curialium (Courtiers Trifles).
**Ibid.