Captive Queen (67 page)

Yet she had hurt him, her husband, irrevocably, rocked his throne more dangerously even than had the murder of Thomas, and seemed to do it purposefully to bring him to ruin. But now all he could see was the woman who had borne him the child they had lost, the only one who really knew what he was suffering. And when he saw her, in the flesh, standing before him at last, after a decade of absence, there stirred in him, along with pity and the need for comfort, some vestiges of the feelings that he had long told himself were dead and buried—killed off brutally by her faithlessness.

For still she was beautiful. He did a quick reckoning. Sixty-one? Impossible. But yes, she was eleven years older than he. Tall and dignified in her elegant mourning robes, with her gossamer-thin black veil falling from a black coif, her heart-shaped face was framed in the most flattering manner by the matching barbette that creased in linen folds under her chin. Her eyes were clear, if questioning, her skin smooth and pale as marble, her mouth bow-shaped yet. But it was the expression on her face that struck him most: there was a new serenity about her, the promise of hard-learned wisdom in those eyes, and an indefinable aura of spiritual peace. It occurred to him suddenly that this woman might no longer be a threat to him.

“My lady,” he said at length. “Welcome. I trust you had a good journey.”

“Wonderful,” she answered. “I cannot tell you how good it felt to be out in the world, enjoying God’s good fresh air again.”

Was she baiting him already? He looked at her sharply, yet could detect no malice in her, and could only deduce that she had but spoken from the heart—as well she might, he conceded.

“Pray sit down,” Henry invited, pulling out the nearer of the two carved chairs that stood at each end of the table. Bread, fish, and fowl had been laid out, along with a fruit tart and the good sweet wine of Anjou, but it looked as if Henry had barely touched the food.

“Are you hungry? Have you eaten?” he asked.

“Some wine would be welcome,” Eleanor said. She could not face food. All she could think of was that she was here, with Henry, her lord, after so long, and that his presence still had the power to move her, as it always had.

Henry poured the wine, moved his chair next to hers and sat down. “I don’t want to shout down the table,” he jested, breaking the tension a little. “Now, I expect you are wondering why I asked you here.”

“I was a little surprised to receive the invitation,” Eleanor returned. “Henry, please—I have to ask, before we go any further. They told me I was no longer a prisoner. Does that mean that I am forgiven?”

He stared at her, nonplussed, then swallowed. “Yes,” he said hoarsely. “Yes, provided you behave yourself in the future.”

“Oh, you can count on that,” she assured him, her tone light. “I am not likely to risk your walling me up for another decade. I am coming to the end of my natural span, and the years I have left are precious to me.”

“I am relieved to have your assurance,” Henry declared, with the hint of a wry smile.

Was that it? she asked herself. The subject, her long years of imprisonment, the breakdown of their marriage, disposed of in a few words? Am I forgiven? Yes, as long as you don’t do it again. No, I won’t. And yet, what else was there to say? Was she to dwell, in accusatory detail, on the miseries she had suffered? Henry must have some idea what he had put her through. Should they disinter and pore over the horrible conflict between them that should long since have been laid to rest? What was the point? What mattered was the present, and the future. They must move forward. If they dwelt too long and hard on how calamitously they had made mistakes and broken faith in the past, they would surely destroy each other.

“You were going to tell me why you sent for me,” she said resolutely, reaching for her goblet.

“Ah,” Henry responded, clearly relieved to be back on safer ground. “It concerns certain lands in Normandy that this young fox Philip is claiming were given to his sister Marguerite. He wants to lay his grubby hands on them, of course, but I reminded him that in fact they belonged to you, and that you had assigned them to Young Henry only for his lifetime, after which they were to revert to you.” At the mention of his dead son, his face tautened. For a heartbeat the mask slipped and it became clear that Henry was suffering greatly—just as she was. But she was not feeling quite ready to confront their common grief just yet. She had had too much to deal with already this day.

“Yes, I suppose those domains will have reverted to me,” she said. “I fear I am long out of touch with my landed and financial interests.”

“That’s neither here nor there,” Henry interrupted impatiently. “What matters is that I retain control of those properties that are rightfully mine, as your lord. Young Philip is dangerous; he has grandiose ideas about expanding the might of France. He has his eye on my empire. Were he to gain possession of these lands, we’d have French troops infiltrating Normandy and … well, you can imagine the rest. I have my hands full as it is, trying to keep my domains under control.”

“I see your point,” Eleanor conceded. “It would indeed be foolhardy to give Philip what he wants. So what can I do for you?”

Henry looked at her with admiration. She was actually willing and ready to cooperate with him, after long years of being bitterly at odds, fighting, quarreling, and worse. And Eleanor marveled that they were sitting here discussing politics much as they had in the old days—the early days. This was surely one of the best aspects of her new freedom, this being restored to the center of affairs.

“I want you to visit those domains, each in turn,” Henry said. “I want it to appear that you are reasserting your rights to them. Show yourself friendly to the local lords, grant charters and privileges, endow churches, found markets—you know the kind of thing that wins hearts.”

“You want me to do all this?” she asked in wonderment. “I, who was so lately your prisoner? You trust me to do it?”

“There is no one else who can,” Henry said, and grinned, and in that moment his guard fell. The grin faded and in its place there appeared on his care-worn features a look of such anguish that it nearly broke Eleanor to see it.

He reached out his hand to her, the movement jerky and tentative. His face was a grimace of agony.

“Help me, Eleanor!” he muttered, his voice strangled. She rose without hesitation and grasped that outstretched hand, pressing it to her lips, her ready tears salting it, her own need for consolation welling urgently. “I did not ask you here just to discuss Normandy,” Henry gasped. “I asked you because there is no one else I can turn to, no one else who loved him as I do.” And with that, he clasped his arms about her waist, buried his head in her belly, and howled like a baby.

   When the storm of weeping had passed, and Eleanor felt she had no more tears left in her, they were gentle with each other, sitting quietly in the candlelight, sipping the restorative wine and talking without rancor of the events that had led them both to this place.

“Henry, I long to see our other children,” Eleanor said suddenly.

He turned his ravaged face to hers and took her hand. “I knew you would want to,” he told her. “They are here. I summoned them for the purpose. Come, you will be reunited with them now.”

As he led her downstairs to the lower chambers, Eleanor feared that she could not cope with so much grief and joy in such a short span of time. She was to see her children, at last, after so long! They were here—and Henry had bidden them come specially to see her. She felt a little light-headed with emotion and anticipation. Would they have changed? How would they react to seeing her? And—most crucial of all—did they still love her? She was in anguish to know.

When she entered the princes’ lodgings hand in hand with Henry, three young men and a young woman rose at once and bowed low. For a confused moment Eleanor hardly recognized any of them, and then she knew them all for her own—much older, of course, and grown to adulthood, but still her children, those she had left to her, and still inestimably loved.

In an instant they were embracing and kissing her, overjoyed to be reunited with their mother, and there were, inevitably, more tears, but happy ones this time. How, she thought, could she ever have doubted their love for her?

“Let me look at you all!” Eleanor cried in delight, as Henry watched them, a wry smile on his face. With the conversation flowing excitedly, she could not take her eyes off Richard, now a magnificent golden giant of almost twenty-six who towered above everyone else. “My great one!” she breathed, all his cruelties and depredations forgotten; she had long since convinced herself that reports of them had been greatly exaggerated, and that it was his father who had really been to blame. She was thrilled to find that in manhood, Richard had such natural authority and presence, and seeing him so powerfully built and charismatic, she did not doubt that his reputation as a warrior equal to Mars was well deserved. He was a born leader, who clearly had the ability to prove himself superior to all others.

Geoffrey, a year older, had not fulfilled his earlier promise of maturing into a handsome man. The only dark-haired one of her sons, he was short of stature and blunt of feature, and his bearing lacked a certain princely grace. But his fair words to his mother belied his appearance; she had always known that this son was blessed with acute intelligence and mental agility, and yet … and yet, she also had a stronger impression than ever that there was a darker Geoffrey, a devilish Geoffrey that lurked only a little way beneath the clever and urbane front that he presented to the world.

She could not believe that John, the youngest of her children, was the young man who had now grown as tall as his brothers, who seemed still to treat him as a child to be humored, while Henry behaved toward John with affectionate indulgence. Indeed, the light seemed to shine from his eyes whenever he looked on the youth, an obvious irritation to Richard and Geoffrey. Eleanor could detect a certain jealousy … It was evident that despite their outward bonhomie, these three sons of hers would always be rivals.

John was courteous to her, yet held himself more aloof than the rest. She could not blame him for that. She suspected that he resented her for having effectively abandoned him at Fontevrault in his infancy; she perceived in his conversation—the diffident conversation of a young man who thinks he knows everything—a certain antipathy toward the Church, which she guessed might have had its roots in his early experiences. Yet she knew that she could never explain to John why she had left him in the care of the nuns. Such things were better put firmly behind them all and consigned to the past. If we allow the past to blight our lives, we will never make a success of this reunion, she told herself again. At least she could look on John, with his dark red curls and his strongly built body, which so favored his father’s, with warmth now, and actually care about what happened to him, as became a natural mother. That was a significant blessing.

She rejoiced to see Matilda; it was a special delight to be reunited with this daughter she had thought never to set eyes on again, although nothing—nothing—could equal the joy she felt at seeing Richard after all the hard, cruel years of separation; and her cup was full when Matilda summoned a nurse, who escorted into the room a procession of seven little Saxon children to greet their grandmother—the first of her grandchildren that Eleanor had ever seen. One of the girls, she was touched to hear, had been named in her honor. She bent and hugged the sturdy little boys, Otto and Henry, lifted the baby Lothar into her arms, and made much of the pretty daughters, especially Richenza—who told an amused Eleanor that she would really rather be called Matilda while she was in England—then there was Gertrude, Ingibiorg, and tiny Nell, her namesake.

She looked on Matilda’s brood with pride, while reflecting that it was sad that none of her other children had been similarly fruitful. The Young King’s son had died, as had Joanna’s and Eleanor’s firstborn. So far there was no whisper that Geoffrey’s Constance, who had now joined the gathering and was fawning possessively over her husband, might be enceinte, and Richard and John were as yet unmarried. Both were betrothed, of course, but, John being only sixteen, it was Richard’s situation that perturbed the Queen more than anything. So far she had encountered neither sight nor sound of the Princess Alys. Was it true that Henry had at one time meant to marry her himself? If so, he had abandoned the idea years since, for she had never heard any more of it. When the opportunity arose, she promised herself, she would tactfully raise the matter of Richard’s marriage with Henry. It must take place soon.

But for now that could wait. There were more pleasant matters at hand, and so much news to catch up on. It was enough that, tonight, she was feasting her eyes at long last on her children, with Henry at her side. Lord Jesus, she prayed, let all our strife and troubles be firmly behind us. And with a radiant smile that captured all the love and hope in her heart, she raised her goblet in yet another toast to this wonderful reunion.

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