The Young Lion (35 page)

On the ride from Lisieux, he and his companions had spent hours debating how best to enlist the sympathies of Eleanor’s vassals, men as notoriously fickle as their liege. Tournaments would be popular, but they took time to organise, and time was short because Henry wanted to embark for England in June while the sea was calm. It was Guillaume who suggested a solution: they would ride their finest horses, wear their most lavish clothes, enter the taverns – and sing. ‘That’s it, you stupid swine of a brother! I’ll woo the common people. Her magnates and barons will hear of it within a week,’ he said.

As they had ridden south they had practised singing ‘The Young Lion’ in langue d’oc, plus another even more overtly political song, about an English crown stolen from its rightful head. Guillaume composed a love song about the bliss of marriage between a beautiful duchess and a young warrior duke.

By nightfall on the wedding day, Poitiers was singing ‘The Young Lion’ and Henry was drunk.

‘Come to bed,’ he said to his wife. They were not in the magical tower where she had lain ten nights with Geoffrey, but in her sleeping chamber in the palace.

‘You’re drunk!’ she objected.

‘Not drunk. Just a bit … happy. Come here.’

When she shrank from him, Henry grabbed her and ripped her violet robe from neck to waist. ‘I hate that gown,’ he said. His voice was sober. ‘You wore it to torment me, did you not? To remind me of Papa? You broke his heart. You broke Louis’s heart, and I don’t know how many others’ besides. You won’t break mine.’

She was speechless. Her torn robe was sliding over her hips to the floor, leaving her naked, while he continued to hold her by the wrist. ‘And another thing,’ he said, ‘never bite me. I never want the marks of your teeth on my body. Is that clear?’ With a smile he added, ‘But I might leave mine on yours. You look very tasty, wife. I’ll have you just as you are, unbathed.’

She was thirty-one years old and he had just turned nineteen. She had never lain with a man younger than herself. The experience was at first exhilarating, then frightening. ‘I’m exhausted, Henry. I can’t go on,’ she whispered.

‘Of course you can,’ he said. ‘A woman who can hunt all day can hunt all night. Lift your hips.’

She remembered the tricks she’d played on Louis – even sometimes on her Uncle Raimond, and on Geoffrey: sighs and murmurs of, you’ve pleasured me beyond endurance. She knew better than to try them with Henry.

She began to whimper.

‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘Have I hurt you?’

‘My heart hurts.’

If she mentions Papa I’ll get up and walk out, he decided. ‘From what?’

‘Because you don’t love me,’ she said.

He lay back in the voluptuous silks of her bed. And so the war over Rachel begins, he thought. He stroked her face with one finger and with his whole hand caressed her from neck to hips, and down her thighs. ‘But I could love you,’ he answered. His voice
was husky. ‘I could learn to love you …’ By now Ranulf’s letter had reached him. He planned to sail from Barfleur in mid-June, so he had less than a month to win the support of Eleanor’s vassals, rebellious scoundrels that they were. He intended to impress them with his might and will, and try to persuade them to join him for war in England. Eleanor could feel he was thinking of something else. Or someone else, she thought bitterly.

‘You be my teacher, sweet wife.’ He rolled on his stomach, resting his chin in his hands. His eager face was that of a hound asking for a treat. The treat he wanted was for Eleanor to agree that they make a progress together, almost immediately, through her lands. ‘Teach me, wife,’ he whispered, and licked her from her navel up to her throat. He dropped his hands from his chin to push himself up and straddle her again. He imagined it was Rachel who lay beneath him and moved gently as, for the eighth time that night, he ploughed his new field.

‘You’ve exhausted me,’ he gasped. ‘What a cruel way to treat your student.’

Despite herself, Eleanor laughed. It was almost dawn.

At dinner that day Richard de Cholet whispered to Eleanor, ‘You look radiant, my dear.’

‘She tried to kill me,’ Henry said. Everyone chuckled, even the Duchess. She agreed to her husband’s suggestion that she summon her magnates and clergy to parley with their Duke, and after this meeting, that they all ride down to Bordeaux. All, that is, except Guillaume. He had left early that morning for Barfleur, where Henry’s army was gathering.

The new Duke of Poitou and Aquitaine wrote to Rachel:

‘To whom did my husband write?’ Eleanor asked the servant who had taken the letter to a post-rider.

‘Someone in Rouen, Duchess.’

I guessed as much, she thought.

Wherever he was, Henry wrote each day to Rachel, and once a week to the Dowager, who gushed about her love for Rachel and baby Geoffrey. He had not dared tell his mother in advance that he would marry Eleanor, nor did she in her letters refer to it. Since Geoffrey’s death she had discovered a cache of Eleanor’s love letters to him. Her first impulse was to burn them. But when cool reason defeated emotion, Matilda stashed the harlot’s letters in the strongbox that held, among its other treasures, the crown jewels of Germany.

News of the marriage reached Louis in forty-eight hours, leaving him at first incredulous, then in a rage so intense royal servants feared for their monarch’s sanity. ‘The vixen planned this all along!’ he screamed. He summoned a conclave of barons to the palace. ‘The Anjevin scoundrel’s stolen my wife!’ he shouted at them. ‘He’s breached our feudatory laws!’

Some of the barons urged their king to revoke the annulment of his marriage to Eleanor; others that he petition the Pope to excommunicate her and her new ‘husband’.

‘I’ll order them to Paris to answer the charge of treason,’ Louis announced.

When Henry read the summons he tore it in two.

News of the shocking, lawless marriage and of imminent invasion tormented King Stephen in England. Eustace announced a ban on the singing of ‘The Young Lion’ in taverns, and even in private homes. He ordered that Eleanor be known as ‘the Harlot Duchess’ and ‘the Great Adulteress’, and set sail for France ‘to comfort my brother’. Across the Rhine there was mirth. In Lombardy, riotous song. Even in Catalonia people stopped each other in the street to gossip about it. Henry Plantagenet had just turned nineteen and was recognised as the greatest magnate in Western Europe. Now he was about to conquer England – and some people had it on good authority that he could fly.

Prince Eustace persuaded Louis to attack Normandy two days before Henry was due to sail to England.

‘I shall divide among you the territories we conquer: first Normandy, then Anjou, Poitou and Aquitaine,’ the King promised his allies, among them Young Geoffrey. ‘Nothing will be left of the Anjevin.’ He wanted to refer to ‘Weed Hat’ and to what upstarts the Anjevins were, but wished to avoid insult to his new ally, Young Geoffrey Plantagenet. Louis, his allies and his generals all based their war plan on the expectation that Henry would ride to the defence of Normandy.

‘How can a king be so stupid?’ Henry asked Eleanor, who had ridden with him to Caen. ‘Had he waited a week he could have picked off my Norman castles as if they were cherries – and forced me to abandon the invasion of England.’

His wife was afraid. ‘I’ve seen Louis in a rage … Henry, he’ll burn Normandy – even this castle we’re in – to the ground.’

Henry looked pensive, but this was a conversation he had been hoping for. ‘My lady, if Louis takes Normandy I’ll lose my title as Duke. But I’ll win it back. His magnates and many prelates, however, will insist you lose your head. And that cannot be restored.’

She understood. ‘What do you need?’

‘Enough gold for twenty-thousand mercenaries.’ She looked stunned. ‘Louis will get the fright of his life. And you’ll share the victory with me.’ He could read from her expression that she was dubious. She had as little understanding of warfare as her ex-husband. He took her chin and kissed her. ‘I’ll tell you a secret,’ he whispered. ‘Normally, I’d only tell this secret to my military commanders …’

She gazed at him with child-like wonder. Henry bent to her ear. ‘I won’t try to relieve Normandy. I’ll attack the Vexin instead. Fifteen-thousand infantry will easily overrun it. I’ll send reserves towards Paris.’

‘Paris!’

He laughed. ‘A feint. I don’t want Paris. I want Louis to shit himself – I beg your pardon – I want the King to come to his senses.’ His wife’s kisses and his kisses to her were sweeter than on their wedding night. Henry revelled to himself, I’ve sprung open the treasury of Aquitaine!

Henry rode straight for the Vexin, while mercenaries poured south from Flanders and north-west from Burgundy. The Duke and his cavalry pushed their horses so hard animals fell dead beneath them. Henry ordered that before remounting, each man must make the sign of the cross and bless his horse for its sacrifice. He himself was in tears because a stallion – ‘my friend since boyhood’ – had foundered beneath him with a scream of agony. He leaped clear as it tumbled, and then slashed its throat.

Henry laid waste to the Vexin and the lands of Louis’s ally Count Robert of Dreux.

The King complained of fever and withdrew his army further south.

Henry abruptly swung west and there, with charm and guile, persuaded the castellans of Chinon, Loudun and Mirebeau to surrender to him and join in an attack on his vengeful younger brother.

Louis’s fever worsened and he took refuge in Young Geoffrey’s remaining and strongest castle, Montsoreau, on the Loire. Henry besieged it. Louis sought a truce and Young Geoffrey flung himself on his brother’s mercy. Henry forgave him and returned all his castles. Sick in body and soul, the King returned to Paris. But nobody doubted that, come spring the following year, he would attack a second time.

On his journey home Louis broke the truce, burning the town of Vernon.

Eustace stayed in Paris. He knew the longer Henry was delayed in defending his home territory, the longer before he could attack England. In the evenings the Prince soothed the King’s rat-eaten heart with the songs of a girl he had brought with him across the Channel. She was flat-chested, not yet old enough to bleed. ‘The voice of an angel. Where did you find her?’ Louis asked.

Eustace sighed. ‘She was singing on a street corner, begging her bread.’

‘I’d like to keep her.’

The Prince fell silent. At length he said, ‘I think she’d grow homesick.’ He glanced inquiringly at the maid, who nodded.

‘Does she not speak?’ Louis asked.

‘Almost never. I find it hard to get a word out of her. She’s a bird. She just sings.’

Eustace had cheering news from his father. King Stephen wrote:

Wallingford’s castellan, Brian FitzCount, wrote correspondingly dismal news to Henry:

Henry knew conditions throughout the country continued to worsen: ploughed land, crops, herds, chickens, all were succumbing to the years of neglect. Famine was spreading.

He paced his writing room, unable to bring himself to dictate to the waiting scribe the truth of his situation – that after the war against Louis he had insufficient funds for an attack on Stephen at Wallingford. The mercenaries wanted higher pay to fight in England where, they also knew, rations were scarce. Nor could he command his vassals to contribute to a war in England so soon after they had discharged their feudal duties by fighting for him in France. He sent a man to FitzCount with the message:
Keep faith, brave comrade. I hasten to you
.

I have to persuade Eleanor to give me more money, he decided.

He returned to her in August and together they made the progress through her domains that he had proposed for May. But his wife was now cool towards him and gave every sign she did not want him in her bed. She no longer fears to lose her head, and she knows I’m almost penniless, he guessed.

Their progress was splendid and excited the populace, but it was not so successful politically. In Limoges a supercilious abbot ordered that the new Duke and his Duchess, encamped outside the city walls, were not to be provided with proper food. When Henry complained of the miserly fare, the Abbot answered that only those within the walls of Limoges had the privilege of its delicacies. Henry flew into a rage. He summoned engineers and had the city walls ripped down while the Abbot stood beside him, Henry holding his wrist in an iron grip. ‘Re-build them with the money you steal from the faithful,’ he snarled as the last stone came down. After this show of power, the southern vassals behaved with respect, if not enthusiasm. They admired their new Duke’s military prowess against Louis, and his will for power. ‘But they hate your ambition for England,’ Eleanor reported to him. ‘They don’t want to join your conquest of a cold, distant island they despise.’

‘And you, wife?’ he asked. ‘Do you want to be a queen again?’

‘You know I do.’

‘If you want to share my privileges, you must share my burdens.’

Eleanor turned her face away to hide the struggle of her emotions. She wanted to say, get rid of that woman and I’ll give you all the gold in Poitou and Aquitaine. But she remained silent.

‘What is it?’ he demanded.