Sharon Penman: Devil's brood

But memories were as elusive as quicksilver, as hard to control. Other images jostled for attention. Harry holding her as they grieved for Joanna’s baby. Despairing together over Hal’s follies. A lifetime of tears and laughter. Lusting after crowns and each other. Their wedding night, his first words after their lovemaking. Good God, woman…Forget what I told you in Paris; I would have married you without Aquitaine. Laughing when she called him a gallant liar, and laughing, too, when she related scandalous stories of her grandfather, exclaiming gleefully, Between the two of us, we’ve got a family tree rooted in Hell!

Yes, there were good memories, too, thirty-seven years of good and bad. Quarrels and reconciliations. Eight cradles and too many gravestones and Rosamund Clifford and power that rivaled Caesar’s, an empire that stretched from the Scots border to the Mediterranean Sea. She lay back on the bed, hot tears seeping through her lashes and trickling across her cheeks until she tasted salt on her lips. One more memory was taking shape, with painful clarity. Another bitter argument, angry words traded back and forth, accusations and reproaches and her scornful warning that echoed now across the years as the Final Judgment upon their marriage.

We’ve schemed and fought and loved until we are so entangled in hearts and minds that there is no way to set us free. God help us both, Harry, for we will never be rid of each other. Not even death will do that.

From the twelfth-century Annals of Roger de Hoveden:

Queen Eleanor, the mother of the before-named duke, moved her royal court from city to city, and from castle to castle, just as she thought proper; and sending messengers throughout all the counties of England, ordered that all captives should be liberated from prison and confinement, for the good of the soul of Henry, her lord inasmuch as, in her own person, she had learnt by experience that confinement is distasteful to mankind, and that it is a most delightful refreshment to the spirits to be liberated therefrom.

Richard soon met the Archbishops of Rouen and Canterbury and sought pardon for taking up arms against his father after taking the cross. He was then girded with the ducal sword of Normandy on July 20 in Rouen. Two days later he met with the French king near Chaumont and reached terms that would prevent a further delay of their crusade.

In the meantime, Eleanor was very active in England on his behalf. After securing the treasury in Winchester, she rode to London and then began a royal progress through the southern shires. She issued edicts establishing uniform weights and measures for corn, liquid, and cloth, as well as a currency valid anywhere in England. She freed the English abbeys from their obligation to stable and provide for the king’s reserve horses and magnanimously gave these mounts to the monks. She continued to release those imprisoned for offenses against Henry’s harsh and unpopular forest laws, and she allowed those who’d been outlawed under these laws to return, “for the good of King Henry’s soul.” And wherever she went, she demanded oaths of fealty from all free men in the name of Lord Richard and the Lady Eleanor.

Her efforts were so effective that Richard was given a tumultuous welcome upon arriving at Portsmouth on August 13. Two days later he got an equally enthusiastic reception in Winchester and was reunited with his mother, the queen.

Richard was laughing. “You know, Maman, your enemies are going to accuse you of practicing the Black Arts. How else explain how you emerged from sixteen years of confinement still looking so elegant and comely, not to mention having more energy than a kennel full of greyhounds. I hear that between your travels and councils and proclamations, you managed to find time to found a hospital for the poor in Surrey. I assume that upon the seventh day, you rested?”

“Not for long,” she said, laughing, too. “If you want your coronation to be as splendid as I suspect you do, that is going to take a great deal more work.” Sitting beside him in the window-seat, she exercised a mother’s prerogative and reached over to brush his hair back from his forehead. “You were telling me about the meeting with Philippe.”

Richard made a mock-sour face. “I had to bribe him with another four thousand marks, and that in addition to the twenty thousand he extorted from my father at Colombieres, then agree to relinquish my rights in Auvergne and give up two fiefs in Berry. I had no choice, though, not if I hope to depart for the Holy Land ere I am too old to fight. But Philippe is going to be troublesome. It is hard to believe that one came from Louis’s loins. You think he could be a foundling?”

He laughed again; laughter came very easily to them both on this August afternoon. “I have made a good match for Richenza; I do not know why we bothered to change the lass’s name when none of us call her Matilda. I am wedding her to the son of the Count of Perche.”

Eleanor nodded approvingly; she’d be marrying into a highborn family and the marital alliance would strengthen their northeast borders. “And what of John’s marriage to Avisa of Gloucester?” She kept her voice noncommittal; John had arrived with Richard, but she’d yet to have a private moment with him.

“I’ll be in Marlborough ere the end of the month to give the bride away. In addition to the Gloucester estates, I am settling upon him lands worth four thousand a year in the counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, and Somerset. Our father had promised it to him again and again, but not surprisingly, he never got around to actually doing it.”

Eleanor regarded him thoughtfully. “I know you’ve been implacable with the men who abandoned Harry toward the last, dismissing them from your service in favor of those who’d stayed loyal, even seizing the lands of Raoul de Fougeres and Juhel de Mayenne. It is always wise policy to reward loyalty to the Crown, of course. But you seem to have made one exception, are showing John great generosity.”

Richard shrugged. “I can hardly do less for him, Maman. Until I have a son of my own, he is my heir-unless you’d rather I pick Arthur in Brittany. So he must be provided for, but you notice all his new lands are located in England, not Normandy or Anjou. I’d as soon keep the Channel between him and my good friend, the French king.”

“So in effect you are buying John’s loyalty.”

He shrugged again. “Well, my father kept him hanging, too, with little to call his own. So he deserves a chance to show he can be trusted if I play fair with him. And if he proves himself to be unreliable, I’ll deal with it. I cannot say I see him as any great threat. Now Geoffrey…he would have borne watching. But I’m not likely to lose sleep fretting about Johnny.”

He paused to take a sip from his wine cup. “I did not tell you, did I? I am honoring my father’s last wishes, and one of them was to see Geoff as Archbishop of York.”

“And you are going to follow through? Is that wise, Richard? Geoff will not be grateful to you, will never forgive you, and I think you know that.”

“Of course I do. Hellfire, I could buy him the papacy, and he’d still act like I am Saladin. But there are advantages to having him wear a miter. Once he is ordained as a priest, he cannot harbor any illusions about laying claim to my throne. You look dubious, Maman. Geoff is an able man, and an ambitious one. You cannot tell me it has not crossed his mind that William the Bastard was born out of wedlock, too. So I’d as soon he kept his eye upon Heaven’s Crown and not my own. Besides,” he added with a sudden grin, “he is not at all happy about it, so how could I resist?”

He continued to confide his plans, pleasing her with most of them. So far he’d yet to take a misstep. She would have felt better, though, if he were not intending to journey to the other side of the world, leaving his kingdom for God knows how long. “So I mean to name the Earl of Essex as one of my justiciars whilst I am away. Willem is a good man, and if he serves me half as well as he served my father, I will be content. I hear there will soon be a vacant bishopric at Ely, as the current occupant of the see is ailing. Once he goes to God, I will name Guillaume Longchamp in his stead. I intend to give Longchamp Geoff’s chancellorship, too, for I want to make sure that I have men I can trust to watch over my kingdom whilst I am gone. Of course you will be the one I’ll truly depend upon to keep order and quench any rebellious sparks ere they can take fire.”