The Dragon and the Jewel (35 page)

Bette firmly pressed her lips together and said, “There is no shame in bearing the great Earl of Leicester an heir, especially when you are the Countess of Leicester.”

Eleanor’s finger went to her lips. “Don’t call me that while we are still at Windsor,” she begged.

“I’m not daft. I shall call you Countess of Pembroke as everyone else does.”

Eleanor wore exactly the same things she had worn to the chapel. She was starting to feel a little better. Her energy was
returning as she felt an urgency to be gone from this place. It was almost like leaving a prison. She had been captive here for longer than she cared to remember.

The air was cold and clear and crisp and as she sat her horse with her sable fur wrapped snugly about her, she realized today was February, the start of a new month—the start of a new life. Before her household cavalcade had traveled two miles out into the countryside from Windsor, they were met by what looked like an army. Ah, God, they have come to arrest me, she thought. Then she realized that the giant in charge of the armed men was Simon de Montfort.

His spirits were high as was his blood. He had no need for hat or cloak. “Good morning, Countess. There has been a last-minute change of plans. We ride north.” He dismounted and came to her side. His voice was low and intimate as he worshipped her with his eyes. “Are you feeling well?”

“Yes, thank you,” she replied, and suddenly it was true.

“We will be in the saddle for two days,” he told her. “I shall take you up before me.” He held up his powerful arms. She looked down at his hands and she was lost. She came down to him all shyness and sable, and in that moment he felt invincible as a god. He had seized the moment and made it happen. For today at least he had vanquished the enemy.

Snuggled against his broad chest, high up on his great destrier, the world seemed a safer place. “Where are we bound?” she asked.

“Home,” he answered with conviction.

She knew the need for secrecy and did not press him, save to ask “Will there be room for this vast company?”

He threw back his head and laughed. The columns of his neck stood out and his strong white teeth flashed. Surely this boyish rogue could not be the same darkly forbidding man she had wed in the night?

“I have sent Rickard de Burgh to fetch all your people from Odiham and still the place will be half empty,” he promised.

Eleanor thought it sounded like heaven, but it could turn out to be hell, she thought with a slight shiver. His black eyes
laughed down at her and suddenly she didn’t care which it was, so long as Sim was there with her.

She clung to him all day, sometimes listening to his deep voice reassuring her, sometimes closing her eyes and resting against him. But in the late afternoon before full dusk descended, his fingers traced the faint shadows along her cheekbones and he knew he must find an inn. Miraculously they had traveled as far as Oxford. Simon bade his men to find their own shelter and be on the road again by six.

He skirted the town itself and rode into an inn yard at the village of Woodstock. Oxford had become the seat of all learning since the religious order of Franciscans settled there to teach and to serve. The great cultural center drew the noblest men of the realm, and Simon felt that either himself or the king’s sister might be recognized if they stayed there.

In the small chamber beneath the rafters Simon insisted upon undressing her and putting her to bed. Then when the serving wench staggered up the stairs with a tray laden with hearty country fare, he carried the food to the bed and fed her with his fingers.

“Will you feed me with your fingers every night, husband?” she purred.

“Nay,” he teased, “you are fat as a piglet now.” They kissed between mouthfuls. Simon firmly decided that she needed her rest and her strength, and he would make no demands upon her this night. When he undressed, however, and she saw that he wore the black leather sheath to protect his shaft from the saddle, she seduced him into making love to her.

At the end of the next day they arrived at Kenilworth just as the sun was setting. It reflected golden in the River Avon and touched every window, turret, and tower with a welcoming, shining brightness. The walls were crenellated and the outer wall was broken by five towers. They rode over an earthen causeway to a two-story gatehouse and through a portcullis.

Eleanor looked up at her new husband. “This isn’t Leicester,” she said, a note of uncertainty and longing in her voice.

“No,” said Simon, cantering into the outer ward, “this is Kenilworth.”

“Oh, ’tis like a world of its own,” she breathed with admiration. The stone walls of the inner ward were over twenty feet thick with built-in rooms for guards and soldiers. “Whoever owns this Kenilworth?” she asked.

The Earl of Leicester swung from his destrier and lifted her to the ground. She looked like a tiny doll against the vast structure whose main floor rose eighty-seven feet into the air. “You do, Eleanor,” he said quietly.

Her eyes were wide. “What do you mean?”

He reached into his doublet and pulled out a crackling parchment she had rested against on the two-day ride. The light was fading quickly, but she read that King Henry III had deeded Kenilworth to Simon de Montfort for faithful duty to England and the crown. He towered over her. Then he reached out a finger beneath her chin and lifted up her face. “I shall probably never be able to give you jewels nor sable furs as costly as these, but this day I give you Kenilworth. I shall make it impregnable so you will be forever safe.”

She was astounded. “You are a magic man, a wizard!”

He enfolded her in his arms before the assembly and kissed her upon the mouth. Then he grinned. “Hocus-pocus, fish bones choke us.”

Eleanor’s silvery laughter floated out upon the chill evening air, and he thought it the loveliest sound he had ever heard.

The next weeks were honest and truly the happiest of her life. Her days were filled to overflowing from dawn ’til dusk. Her household was a large one, a blend of her people from Windsor, London’s Durham House, Odiham, and the servants and men-at-arms from Chepstowe in Wales. All had to integrate with the staff who had worked at Kenilworth all their lives.

Eleanor and Simon chose the large impregnable Caesar Tower for their private domain. From its high windows they could see all of Kenilworth with its double ramparts and deep, wide moat. There were so many tenants at Kenilworth, it had its own mill to grind their grain. It had its own courts of justice where prices were regulated, disputes settled, and crimes tried. It had its own prison and gallows, and a small town known as Banbury had grown up around Kenilworth’s brewery. It had its
own armory and chapel and a small order of Franciscan brothers who were beginning to compile a library.

Her nights were like Paradise. High in the Caesar Tower the lovers were at last private enough to say and do all the things they had only dreamed about. Immediately Simon had had built an enormous bed, twice the usual size to accommodate his giant frame. Eleanor at last had a purpose in life and became such an efficient chatelaine it amazed everyone. She checked the kitchens for cleanliness, the salt meat for maggots, and the flour for weevils. She took stock of her food supplies and herbs and directed her servants to do the laundry, change the rushes, replenish the rushlights, mold tallow and scented wax candles, and made sure someone checked the drains and the well water.

She directed her maids to visit the sick and her seamstresses to sew russet or green garments for the smiths, grooms, cooks, bakers, and washerwomen. She appointed a steward, studied languages with a chaplain, and began a household journal, signing each page Eleanor, Countess of Leicester. Each day she placed her hand upon the earth and whispered, “Mine!”

E
leanor stood in the Caesar Tower gazing from a high window early one morning toward the end of February. Early signs of spring were everywhere, and on this clear morning she could see the beautiful hills of West Anglia beyond the river.

Simon lay naked upon the bed, watching her every move beneath lazy eyelids. He rose and came to stand behind her, his powerful hands cupping her shoulders. “Take a good look at everything. It will never look the same again after today.”

Her brows drew together apprehensively. “What do you mean?”

“I’m going to flood a hundred acres of meadowland. From now on Kenilworth will sit in the center of a mere.”

“A mere is a lake, isn’t it? How will we get in and out?”

“Same as always, over the earthen causeway and through the portcullis, which will stand high above the water. But it will be the only way to approach Kenilworth. It will make it completely impregnable. We have worked long and hard on the plan. I will divert the water from the River Avon, then dam it back up. The mere will be deep enough for us to have boats and a little barge for you.”

She turned in his arms so that her cheek was pressed against
the sable pelt of his naked chest. “Sim, I don’t want February to end. It has been the most wonderful month of my life.”

He wanted to assure her that March would be even better, but he could not bring himself to lie to her. He had done his very best to keep out the world, but he was a realist and he knew that before much longer, their secret wedding would be secret no longer. He had called the tune and he was ready to pay the piper, but he knew that Eleanor would also have to pay and he prayed that she would be strong enough. In the beginning he had set out to enslave her, to make her crave his caresses, but he had become ensnared in the plot and become so enraptured by her that the captor had become the captive. His hands denuded her of her nightrail and he dipped his head to run a sensual tongue along her throat. Simon’s nude body pressed against hers always sent the desire snaking through her limbs and belly. She stood on tiptoe to slide her arms up about his neck, and her fingers entwined in his long black hair.

His thick muscled arm went beneath her bare knees as he swept her high and carried her to the bed. He cautioned himself to be gentle in his lovemaking and promised himself that shortly he would abstain totally until after their child was born. Pregnancy had made her absolutely bloom. Her breasts, belly, and thighs were lush, inviting his hands and his lips. He lay her back in the bed and spread her dark hair across the pillows, then he knelt before her and opened her knees so that he had an unimpeded view of the cleft between her legs, crowned by tight, black silk ringlets. His eyes were black with passion and she watched his face become taut and hungry with his great need. As his mouth moved closer to her secret center, she wanted him to devour her. His thumbs caressed her cleft, opening her slightly, and just before he covered her with his hot mouth, he whispered, “It looks exactly like a rosebud.”

He loved to do this to her. She was so small and exquisitely made, and he knew it aroused her to madness. After he loved her this way, it was always easier to penetrate her with his great manroot. She lay sprawled before him with all her senses heightened. He licked delicately at the rosebud until she gasped and arched into his mouth with her first climax, crying “Sim,
Sim.” He lifted his head and hung above her, watching every tiny expression of pleasure.

When she could breathe again she looked beneath heavy lids at his swollen cock and whispered, “I have such an urge to love you with my mouth, but you are too long.”

“Sweet, sweet, you don’t have to put your mouth over all of it, just the head,” he explained intensely.

“Come closer,” she whispered.

He arched above her so that his erection brushed her cheek. She caressed him with her small hands, and her tongue darted out to taste the salt of him. Then her lips covered him and held him inside her soft mouth where she felt him pulse and throb. She ran her tongue beneath the ledge and molded it to the heart-shaped tip.

“No more, love,” he cried raggedly, then he scooped her up into his lap and lay on his side behind her. He raised one of her pretty thighs and entered from behind. The feelings and sensations were totally new from this angle, and as she built to an unbelievably hard climax she clutched handfuls of bedclothes in the throes of her passion.

“Sim!” She moaned. “All your thrusts press forward to the front where I love it, oh, oh, ohmigod, Sim.” No sooner had she taken her enjoyment to the full than Simon’s hot seed erupted into her, and she cried out anew at the pleasure he brought her.

Later in the day she stood at the windows of the high tower and watched in wonder as her Kenilworth was transformed forever. The jewel of England rose up from its silvery setting. The crenellated, double-walled castle with its five towers now sat in a lake that covered over a hundred acres.

Rickard de Burgh had had another vision and had ridden back to the capital to await the coming storm.

Simon invited his friend Robert, Bishop of Lincoln, to Kenilworth for a week. He was the head of the largest and most important diocese in England. Simon wanted to tell him of his secret marriage to Eleanor before the story leaked out. Realizing Eleanor would be frantic if she knew he intended to reveal
their secret to someone high in the church, he kept his mouth shut about the child.

Robert was both philosophical and practical. “I will support you in this,” he said firmly, his shrewd eyes hooded. “You will need all the support you can gather. In the years I have known you, you have risen to be the highest lord in this part of England. You have always tempered your punishments of the citizens by being a pattern of mercy and forgiveness rather than a master of cruelty. Justice is a passion with you, and you care about the common man.” The Bishop of Lincoln was far-seeing. He knew a born leader when he saw one.

Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, had such strength not only in body and character but in numbers. More fighting men were drawn to him every day, and now that he occupied Kenilworth he was almost invincible. This household already held more people than the king’s court and was capable of holding hundreds more at a pinch.

When the queen laughed up her sleeve that she had rid the court of Eleanor Plantagenet, Henry could not resist imparting the knowledge that he had aided his little sister in a secret marriage. Upon learning that her enemy had married the magnificent war lord, the queen almost ran mad with envy. She swore she would be revenged for what she took as a personal injury. She had formed an infatuation for the devastatingly handsome warrior and considered him a Queen’s Man.

She denounced Eleanor from one end of Windsor to the other, and within hours the council of fifteen were incensed with the king for orchestrating the royal princess’s marriage without their consent.

The council’s reaction paled in comparison to that of the church. The church men collectively were horrified by Eleanor’s breach of her vow of chastity. The Archbishop of Canterbury immediately declared the marriage invalid, and Rickard de Burgh rode full gallop to Kenilworth to confirm the bad news.

Simon de Montfort paced about the great hall, which could seat three hundred. Each end boasted massive, walk-in fireplaces, and the high ceilings were beamed and raftered. It was
intolerable to him that his marriage had been declared invalid. When Eleanor found out she would be devastated that in the eyes of the church and perhaps even the rest of England, they were living in sin and their child would be a bastard.

Sir Rickard said, “I regret, my friend, that I must hit you with more bad news, but you must know what you are up against.”

Simon nodded grimly. “Forewarned is forearmed.”

“The barons on the council are threatening to get the other barons to join them in an uprising against the king. They have appealed to the king’s brother, Richard of Cornwall, to lead them.”

Simon raised his head like a stag who suddenly scents danger. “Blood of God … that a simple marriage should bring the country to the brink of civil war.”

“No royal marriage is a simple marriage,” Sir Rickard said quietly.

“I understand the objection of the church because of the broken vows, but what is the barons’ objection to me?” As soon as he asked the question he knew the answer; de Burgh’s reply confirmed it for him.

“They are sick and tired of the king acting without authority. They are sick and tired of the king’s foreign favorites and relatives taking England’s castles and titles and heiresses. The king and queen have no children, no heir, and so if Eleanor is allowed to wed they want a royal husband for her in case she is the only Plantagenet to bear a child and an heir to the throne.”

Simon de Montfort had never sat and brooded upon a problem in his life. He was a man of action who made his decisions both swiftly and firmly. “I will seek advice from Robert, the Bishop of Lincoln, then I will go to Richard and ask him to let me speak with the barons face to face.” He grimaced at his old friend. “First, however, I must face someone more formidable than all the bishops and barons combined.”

He found her before the fire, relaxing in a warm bath. He hesitated for long moments, hating to disturb her tranquility. She was the loveliest sight he’d ever seen with her damp, black curls pinned up atop her head, falling down in tendrils of disarray, the fireshine splashing over her body.

“Kathe,” he said softly. She was immediately alerted. He called her that only in moments when he felt unbearable tenderness for her.

“Whatever is it?” she asked, her hand going to her throat.

“Something to upset you, I am afraid.”

She stood up in alarm. “Our secret has become known.”

He nodded yes, then, after taking up a large towel to wrap about her, he lifted her from the water and sat her in his lap before the fire. “The barons are on the brink of an uprising against Henry because of our marriage.”

“You must go to his aid. You have trained most of his army, and you have so many fighting men of your own.”

He chose his words carefully. “My men feel a loyalty for me that I do not believe they feel for Henry. The barons are rallying to your brother Richard. To fight would mean civil war. I will go to Richard and speak with the barons myself.” He did not tell her their marriage had been declared null and void; she would learn that soon enough.

“I will go to Henry,” she said decisively. “He will need my loyalty.”

“Splendor of God, you will do no such thing! Kenilworth is your haven, your sanctuary. You will remain safely here.”

A look of stubborn defiance came into her face.

“I forbid you to leave.” The tone told her that she must not disobey him. He was such a big, powerful man that it took all her courage to defy him, and when she sat naked upon his knees it was an impossibility. “It is very commendable to be loyal to your brother, but your first loyalty is to yourself and this child you carry. Have you so little faith in me you think I cannot put all to rights?”

She felt a rush of shame. Wasn’t he her magic man, her wizard? She touched his face tenderly, blinked back her tears and whispered, “Hocus-pocus, fish bones choke us.”

“Put some clothes on, you’re driving me mad.” When she learned they’d been living in sin for over a month, she probably would not appreciate his trying to make love to her. “I am leaving today, Eleanor.”

“When will you return?” she questioned anxiously.

“I shall be back when I am back, and not before. It will ever
be so, my love. When I leave to do a job, I won’t return until I have accomplished it”

She came to him in her shift and he opened his arms to her. “Sim, promise me you will take care.”

His hot hungry mouth swallowed her words before he forced himself from their chamber high in the Caesar Tower.

Robert, Bishop of Lincoln, had already heard the news by the time Simon arrived. They sat together now drinking wine in a small laboratory the learned bishop used for his scientific experiments. “I will do all in my power and write letters to the king and to the Archbishop of Canterbury telling them I support you in this marriage. However, there is a higher authority than the Archbishop of Canterbury, you know.”

Simon de Montfort’s face set in rigid lines. “You mean the Pope. You know damned well I am against the Pope’s interference in English matters. I have fought against the Pope all my life. He would not even listen to me.”

Robert held out his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “You are behind the time. We have a new Pope in Rome called Gregory IX. Simon, I’ll let you in on a church secret. It is only a matter of a bribe. Let the papal court decide if her vow was binding. It will effectively cut off every objection in England.”

“Since I came to you for advice, I should have enough good sense to take it.”

“You will need three things: money, money, and money. I will give you five hundred crowns, and I know a couple of good citizens of Leicester who will be glad to match my donation. I will start fund raising while you go to Richard and speak with the barons. You must beg, borrow, and steal enough for a quick trip to Rome and a dispensation.”