Beloved Enemy (79 page)

Bellebelle was safe and secure. Their misbegotten son, Geoffrey, child of his heart, Henry recognized, was being raised as a royal prince.

His dear friend Thomas had been given the chance to achieve the power and success Henry knew he had always craved. Perhaps the demons of Thomas’s humble origins would be exorcised at last; he would grow into the greatness that Henry had long suspected lay buried within him.

Then there were his legitimate children. Richard would inherit his mother’s duchy of Aquitaine; Henry was already investigating the possibility of having his youngest son, Geoffrey, marry the heiress of Brittainy. Soon he would be looking to form illustrious alliances for his daughters, thus continuing to expand his empire.

His heir, young Henry, whom he intended to crown king of England while, he, Henry, yet lived, would establish the succession beyond any doubt or future breach of faith from others.

Best of all he had his dearest Eleanor, now nestled within the crook of his arm, her cheek against his chin. She was still the enchanting Circe who had captivated his heart, stirred his loins, and challenged his intellect. But she was becoming more like Penelope as well. Steadfast as moonrise, dependable as sunset, she was part of him—breath, blood, bone, and sinew. All the threads of his life had come together now, rewoven into a glittering new fabric.

Henry felt his spirit take flight on invisible wings. He knew that he would remember this moment of pure, unadulterated joy all the days of his life.

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.

E
LEANOR 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.

TO BE CONTINUED …

A
T 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.

R
ESEARCH IN ENGLAND WAS
done at Guildhall Library, Aldermanbury, London; Southwark Cathedral, Southwark; the York Minister Library, the Foundation Museum, St. William’s College, City of York; the Salisbury Public Library, Old Sarum, Salisbury; Wallington Public Library, Wallington. In the United States, research was conducted in Los Angeles at the UCLA Research and College Libraries, the Brand Music and Art Library in Glendale, the Glendale Public Library, and the Pasadena Public Library.

Of the many history volumes consulted the one I relied on most heavily was Marion Mead’s superb biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine. The following were also particularly helpful:
Eleanor of Aquitaine,
by Desmond Seward;
Eleanor of Aquitaine,
by Regine Pernoud;
Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings,
by Amy Kelly;
Eleanor of Aquitaine,
by M. V. Rosenberg;
England Under the Angevin Kings,
vols. I and II, by Kate Norgate;
The King and Becket,
by Nesta Paine;
Henry the Second,
by A. S. Green;
Henry II, King of England,
by Geraldus Cambrensis;
Henry II Plantagenet,
by John Schlicht;
My Life for My Sheep,
by Thomas Duggan;
Life in a Medieval City, Life in a Medieval Castle, Women in the Middle Ages,
all by E and G. Gies;
Daily Living in the 12th Century,
by Urban T. Holmes, Jr.;
Pilgrims, Heretics and Lovers,
by Claude Marks;
Life on a Medieval Barony,
by W. S. Davis;
The Survey of London,
by John Stow;
Medieval London,
by Timothy Baker;
Harlots, Whores and Hookers,
by Hilary Evans;
Beds, Bawds and Lodgings,
by C. J. Burford;
Sex in History,
by C. Rattray Taylor;
The Women Troubadours,
by Meg Bogin;
Songs of the Troubadours,
edited and translated by Anthony Bonner;
The Conquering Family,
by Thomas Costain;
De Nugis Curialium (Courtier’s Trifles),
by Walter Map, edited and translated by Frederick Tupper and M. B. Ogle;
The Middle Ages, A Concise Encyclopaedia,
edited by H. R. Loyn;
Henry II,
by W L. Warren.

Turn the page to continue reading from the Plantagenet Trilogy

O
N A HOT DAY
in mid-July, Henry II Plantagenet, king of England, sat in the garden of the ducal palace at Rouen surrounded by his family. The sun blazed down from a glittering pale-blue sky; roses and lilies drugged the air with their sweetness. A light wind stirred the filigree of lacy green leaves on the flowering chestnut. In the background he could hear the murmur of conversation from servitors and female attendants mingled with the sound of a minstrel’s lute and a plaintive voice singing a love song.

How good it was to sit drowsily in the sun, basking in an unaccustomed tranquility, savoring this moment of quiet happiness. So much of his life was spent in constant motion, riding through his vast empire in a tireless effort to see justice done, ensuring his subjects were at peace, his lands safe. Sometimes Henry felt life slipping by while he fought to keep the reins of power under his control. Soon that would change, he reminded himself. Now that his chancellor, closest companion, and trusted confidant, Thomas Becket, had been made Archbishop of Canterbury, much of the burden would be lifted.

Through half-closed eyes, Henry turned toward Eleanor, his beloved queen, cool and lovely in her rose-colored tunic and matching headdress. Seated next to him on the cushioned stone bench, she read aloud to their six-year-old, Matilda, from a gold- and purple-lettered Book of Days. Idly he reached out a hand and caressed her knee. A meaningful glance from her brilliant hazel eyes, accompanied by a slow sensual smile, brought back with a tingle of pleasure the memory of the previous night’s passionate revels.

Henry’s gaze passed on to his mother, Maud, dozing under the chestnut. Regal in gray and mauve, she looked every inch her self-styled title of empress. Although she had once been the empress of Germany before returning to England, that had been many years ago. His eyes lingered affectionately on her resolute face. Without her heroic efforts on his behalf, he would not now be the king of England, count of Anjou, and duke of Normandy. He owed her everything.

Baby Eleanor, fast asleep, stirred in his arms and Henry shifted his leg to make her more comfortable. A short distance away, his second and third sons, Richard and Geoffrey, five and three, were learning the art of balancing small swords, points capped, and wielding little shields under the protective eye of a sergeant-at-arms. Geoffrey, slender and russet-haired, the cleverer of the two, was no match for the older, broad-shouldered Richard, a natural warrior even at this young age. Golden hair matted to his forehead, Richard’s fierce blue eyes were fixed upon his brother with intense concentration.

“Geoffrey, mind how you move your feet.” Henry jabbed his finger to the left. “No, no, no! To the left! God’s eyes, don’t lower your shield, that will give him an opening. That’s it, that’s it. Well done.” He nodded at Richard. “You make a formidable opponent, my son.”

Never articulate, Richard swallowed, obviously overwhelmed by these rare words of praise. Poor lad. Henry knew the boy was starved for the attention he never felt able to give him.