Sharon Penman: Devil's brood

Below in the garden, Joanna had decided the tussling had gone on long enough and, with an authority that would have done credit to a girl twice her age, she demanded that the boys stop fighting. They did, probably glad of an excuse to end their pummeling, but Maud was amused by the little girl’s aplomb, thinking that the young Eleanor must have been just as self-assured and poised. Smiling at Joanna’s mother, she said, “Are the rumors true about Joanna? That she may soon be plight-trothed to the King of Sicily?”

“There have been talks,” Eleanor confirmed. “But we’re still in the preliminary stages of negotiation, so it is too soon to tell how it will go. There is no hurry, after all, for Joanna will only be seven in October. I see no reason for her to grow up in a foreign court,” she said, so emphatically that Maud thought of Joanna’s older sisters. Tilda had been the first to go, wed two years ago in far-off Saxony at the age of twelve. Then it was the turn of Eleanor’s namesake, known as Leonora, wed to the young King of Castile at the age of nine.

The two women looked at each other, the same thought in both their minds. In their world, princesses were born to be bartered for foreign alliances, and although the Church officially disapproved of child marriages, it was a common occurrence. Henry’s mother had been sent to Germany at the age of eight. Marguerite had been wed to Hal before she was three. Eleanor had been thirteen when her father’s unexpected death set in motion the events that would give her the crown of France and a life in exile. Maud had been older than Eleanor, but not by much, when she’d been married to the Earl of Chester, a man utterly lacking in either honor or mercy, but one of the great lords of the realm. Because she was quick-witted and resilient and pragmatic, Maud had learned to live in relative peace with her savage, unstable husband, to take solace and joy in her children, and, eventually, to revel in the freedom of widowhood. But she had made sure that her daughter would be no child bride; Beatrix had not wed Ralph de Malpas until after she’d celebrated her nineteenth birthday.

As the only daughter in a family of sons, Maud had often longed for a sister, and as she gazed at Eleanor now, it occurred to her that this woman was as close as any blood-sister could be. They had much in common, both beautiful in their youth, both strong-willed, proud, and confident in their powers to charm, both now within hailing distance of their fifth decade, for they would celebrate their forty-eighth birthdays that summer.

“I had an interesting conversation this morn with your niece Alienor,” Maud commented, with a wry smile. “She wanted to know why I had never remarried after Randolph’s death.”

“I hope you did not shatter all her illusions about marriage,” Eleanor said, no less wryly. “You must remember that her parents were that rarity, a couple who’d wed for love…or lust. And Alienor seems content enough with her own husband…so far.”

“No, I was circumspect…for me. I said merely that my memories of Randolph were too vivid for me to contemplate taking another husband.”

Eleanor laughed approvingly. “It is no easy feat for a wealthy widow to escape her legion of suitors. You must have been very fleet of foot, indeed, dearest.”

“I made sure,” Maud acknowledged, “never to leave my lands without a sizable escort, one large enough to discourage any ambitious young lordlings with ambush and marriage on their minds.” Knowing that Eleanor had fended off two such attempts to force her into matrimony as she’d journeyed back to Aquitaine after her marriage to the French king had been annulled, she indulged her curiosity to ask: “If you could have been certain, Eleanor, that you need not fear being remarried against your will, would you have remained unwed?”

Eleanor’s mouth tightened, almost imperceptibly. “You do not truly think that the French court would have permitted that? No sooner was the ink dry upon the annulment decree than Louis’s advisors were arguing amongst themselves, deciding which French puppet to place in my bed. Had they even suspected I’d so hastily wed a man of my own choosing, they’d never have allowed me to return to my own domains. But yours was a conjectural question, was it not? So in that spirit: ‘Be not entangled again in the yoke of bondage.’”

Maud blinked, for Eleanor rarely let her bitterness show so nakedly. “Your interpretation of Scriptures is somewhat uncanonical,” she said dryly. “That is from St Paul, is it not? If my memory serves, he also said it was better to marry than to burn, hardly a rousing endorsement of wedlock.”

“I have never understood,” Eleanor confessed, “why the Church sees lust as so great a sin. Why would the Almighty have made coupling so pleasurable if it were so wrong? But when I tried to argue that point with Louis, he was horrified that I dared to question the teachings of the Holy Fathers, and it convinced him that we were a depraved and wanton lot, we southerners. He could never forgive himself for the carnal pleasures he found in my bed. He was not much of a husband, or a king, either, for that matter, but by God, he’d have made a superb monk.”

Eleanor’s face shadowed, for even now, memories of her marriage to the French king were not welcome ones. “He may well have been right, though, about the people of the south. We view lust as we do wine and food and laughter, as essential ingredients for a joyful life. My grandfather…ah, how he loved to vex his priests and distress his confessor! He wrote troubadour poetry, you know, and some of it would have made a harlot blush. He liked to joke that one day he’d establish his own nunnery and fill it with ladies of easy virtue. On our wedding night, I told Harry some of the more scandalous stories about my grandfather, and he laughed until he nearly choked, gasping that between us, we had a family tree rooted in Hell.”

This last memory was both more pleasant and more painful than those from her marriage to Louis, and Eleanor fell silent for several moments. “I think,” she said at last, “that I would have wed Harry even if I were not threatened with a husband of the French court’s choosing. I wanted children, for I knew Louis would never let me see our two daughters, and indeed, he did not. I needed an heir for Aquitaine and I wanted to give Harry sons, to prove wrong those who’d dared to call me a barren queen. I always knew it was Louis’s failing, not mine. How could I conceive if I so often slept alone?”

“And I am assuming that you had no trouble getting Harry into your bed?” Maud queried, so blandly that Eleanor could not help smiling.

“You could safely say that,” she conceded, and Maud felt a surge of sadness that things had gone so wrong between her cousin and his queen. She remembered how it had once been, remembered the early years of their marriage, when they’d been so sure that the world, like the English crown, was theirs for the taking, lusting after empires and each other, striking such sparks with their quarreling and their lovemaking that the air around them always seemed charged, as if a storm were about to break.

Eleanor’s attention was focused again upon the gardens. She was still a very handsome woman, but even queens were vulnerable to the passage of time. Now, though, her smile was dazzling, chasing away the years, cares, even regrets. Maud glanced over to see what she found so interesting.

Another youth had sauntered into the garden, accompanied by a huge wolfhound. Maud guessed him to be about sixteen, for he was already taller than many grown men, and he moved with the athletic grace of one utterly comfortable in his own body. Maud knew how unusual it was for one so young to have such physical presence; both of her sons had been as clumsy and gangling as colts when they were this boy’s age. He had curly red-gold hair and a scattering of freckles, and she would later marvel that she had not known his identity at once, but it was not until Joanna gave a delighted squeal and flung herself into his arms that she realized she was looking at Eleanor’s second son, Richard, who would on the morrow be invested as Duke of Aquitaine.