Alison Weir - Captive Queen

“Your life cannot have been easy, child,” she ventured. “You should have been married to Richard years ago, and become the mother of a fine brood by now.”

Alys flinched. Her recoil was unmistakable.

“I should have been married years ago,” she said pointedly.

“You can forget about that,” Eleanor retorted. “My marriage is valid. The Pope would not countenance its annulment.”

“You could have retired gracefully to Fontevrault!” It was an accusation.

“For which I have no vocation,” Eleanor replied calmly, although her ire was rising like bile in her throat. “It was all a ruse by Henry to gain possession of my domains.”

“It was far more than that!” Alys countered, her eyes flashing fire. They were green, like a cat’s, and full of venom. “You just didn’t want to lose your husband to another woman—a younger woman. You couldn’t accept that it was me he wanted for a wife, not you.”

“Next you’ll be telling me that he loved you!” Eleanor said scornfully. “Well, let me assure you I have heard it all before, with Rosamund.”

“He did love me—he loves me still!” Alys cried.

“How sweet!” Eleanor sneered, resolutely ignoring the flicker of fear that the girl’s words had ignited in her. “My, you are an innocent! Love indeed! What does that have to do with royal marriages made for profit and politics? Do you think, you foolish child, that love ever dictated Henry’s policy? I thought you would have more sense.”

Alys jumped to her feet, and as she did so, the folds of her bliaut rippled over her figure. She was, quite obviously, pregnant. Eleanor stared at her in horror.

“Is this not the fruit of love?” the princess cried triumphantly, smoothing her hands over her swollen belly.

“Any trollop can get a man to bed her,” Eleanor observed tartly, but her voice came out hoarsely through dry lips. “Love rarely comes into it. I suppose you are going to tell me that that is the King’s.”

“It is!” Alys insisted.

“Tell me, how could you so dishonor Richard, the man to whom you are betrothed?” Eleanor cried, rising, scandalized beyond measure. That Henry had not scrupled to take his son’s betrothed! She could hardly believe it, even of him, with his voracious appetites. “Shame on you for a harlot!”

Alys was weeping now. “He loves me! You will not stand aside and let us marry. It’s your fault!”

Eleanor ignored that. The desire to wound her rival was strong in her, and she could not resist it. “Did you know he has another mistress?” she taunted.

The barb went home. Alys gaped at her. “You’re lying—to spite me. I will not believe it.”

“Nor did I until yesterday afternoon,” Eleanor said, “and if it wasn’t for some clerk’s silly mistake, I would be in happy ignorance now. But how I found out is neither here nor there. Her name is Bellebelle. She sounds like a harlot. But you would know, of course. And you would know too that Henry is incapable of staying faithful.”

As Alys collapsed in tears, Eleanor looked down on her with distaste. “What matters most in all this is that my son, your betrothed, is spared any hurt,” she hissed. “If he knew of your shame, he would surely kill you—and his father too, and the world would applaud him for it.”

“He does know,” sobbed Alys, a note of defiance creeping back into her voice. “He does not care. He wishes only to wed me to spite his father and deprive him of the person he loves most. And he means, through me, to ally himself with my brother.”

Her words took Eleanor’s breath away. Richard knew. Of course he did. She remembered that strange look he had given Henry.

She left the girl weeping and stumbled blindly back to her apartments, her thoughts in turmoil. What have we come to, as a family, that Henry and Richard should effectively collude in such vile, underhand dealings? she asked herself. Was there no honor left in the world? And what of the silly, deluded girl—a princess of France, no less—who had been the unwilling pawn in it all? Philip would declare war if he heard of it!

But maybe, just maybe, he did know. He was capable of dissembling with the best of them, and maybe he was playing them at their own game, meaning to have the last laugh.

She began to make excuses, not for Henry—he was past redemption where women were concerned, in thrall to that unruly and mischievous member between his legs that seemed to have an independent life of its own, in defiance of all sense or morality! But Richard … Richard, she told herself, was merely being pragmatic—and chivalrous too, yes, in standing by his compromised betrothed. It took a very special man to do that. Most would have abandoned Alys, or demanded satisfaction from her seducer. But Richard was not most men: he was a lion among mortals.

Having consoled herself with such reasoning, Eleanor decided that she would say nothing of this to anyone. If that meant she was colluding too, then so be it. She could find it in herself to feel pity for Alys, unpleasant chit though she was, and as for Henry—well, what should she feel but disgust, that old, familiar revulsion at his concupiscence, but far more strongly this time, because he was injuring not only herself, and Alys, but—far more importantly—her adored Richard? Yet even that she would conceal, for Richard’s sake.

Had she really wanted Henry in her bed again? She must have been mad! Something had died in her this day, and she feared it might never be revived.

It was on St. Andrew’s Day that Eleanor arrived at Westminster to be reunited with her husband and sons. Her presence, and theirs, had been required by Henry in the wake of the war that broke out in Poitou that autumn between Geoffrey and John on one side—Geoffrey being ever ready to assist in the stirring up of trouble—and Richard, valiantly defending his lands, on the other. It was only after a stern command from their father that the brothers had lain down their arms and come north to England. They were already uneasily installed in the Palace of Westminster when Henry came to greet Eleanor at the river stairs.

“Greetings!” he called chirpily as she stepped out of the boat. He took her hand and pressed it to his lips. “My lady, welcome. I have long looked for your coming.”

Instantly, she was wary. He wanted something from her. Aquitaine for John, no doubt! To what else could she attribute these fair words and cozening smiles?

“Greetings, my lord,” she murmured, thinking of Alys and the unknown Bellebelle, and disengaging her hand from Henry’s. She could not bear him to touch her at this moment. “So our boys have been fighting again. Do you really think they will make peace when you keep inciting them to war?”

“I incite them?” Henry threw her a sideways glance. She was going to be difficult. “They must learn to obey me.”

“They are grown men now, and have their own sense of what is right and just,” Eleanor told him. “Might cannot always triumph over right, Henry.”

“Why do you always like to make out that I’m in the wrong?” he asked aggrievedly, his good mood rapidly dissipating.

“If the cap fits …” She smiled.

“You and I need to have a little talk,” Henry told her brusquely. “I have summoned you to help me bring about a concord between our princes, not to join in the quarreling. I have summoned the Great Council as well, as we also have to confirm the election of the new Archbishop of Canterbury. Baldwin’s the man. A saintly soul he is too, a gloomy bag of nerves, in fact, and I’ve no doubt he’d prefer to remain a monk, but he’ll be useful to me.”

“You mean he won’t defy you as Becket did,” Eleanor murmured.