Alison Weir - Captive Queen

“It is a wise decision,” she said evenly, conceding defeat. “But there was something else I wished to discuss with you, and that is what you have done in Aquitaine.”

“Aquitaine is quiet now,” Henry said, his tone final, indicating that was the end to the matter.

“Quiet, but seething under the surface, so I hear,” Eleanor persisted.

“From your uncle Raoul? I didn’t notice him keeping your unruly vassals in check!” Henry smirked unpleasantly.

“No one has ever succeeded in doing that, not even my father or my grandfather,” Eleanor snapped. “The geography of my lands does not lend itself to unity; can’t you see that?”

Henry rose and began pacing up and down the room.

“Well, I’m not content with my authority extending only to the regions around Poitiers and Bordeaux,” he told her. “With my officials in place, answering directly to me, I intend to bring some order to your domains.”

“You are alienating my subjects by doing that!” Eleanor flared. “They resent having strangers lording it over them. Things were bad enough before, when Louis sent in his Frenchmen to rule in his name; when I went home and they were sent away, the people rejoiced. It was very moving to see that. It meant everything to them to be governed by their own. Henry, I want my subjects to love you, but if you persist in this folly, they will only hate you.”

Henry had been listening with an irritated expression. He stopped his pacing by the door and turned to face her.

“I’m not doing it to win popularity,” he declared. “I mean to have your vassals bend to my will, like it or not. They must recognize my authority, and you must support me in enforcing it.”

“Then you must go about it a different way!” Eleanor flung at him.

“No one says ‘must’ to me,” he snarled. “I don’t take orders from you, or anyone. You are in no position to dictate to me, Eleanor. Might I remind you that a wife’s duty is to obey her husband, to rear his children, and to warm his bed when he so desires. And there it ends.”

“If you think I’m in any mood to warm your bed after you’ve insulted my intelligence, then let me put you straight now!” Eleanor riposted, her face flushed with anger.

“Please yourself!” Henry said testily, and went out of the room, leaving Eleanor wanting to scream with frustration. She could never win with him. He was utterly incapable of seeing her point of view, and once his mind was made up, there was no moving him.

The King stormed down the spiral stairs and into the great hall of the castle, nearly colliding with two of the Queen’s ladies, who were making their way up to her chamber with their arms full of freshly laundered veils and chemises, smelling of sweet herbs. One of the ladies looked him boldly in the eye. She had a heart-shaped face set off to perfection by the widow’s wimple that framed her chin and her rosy cheeks. He knew who she was—what man didn’t? Rohese de Clare, Countess of Lincoln, had the reputation of being the most beautiful woman in England. It was well known that during the five years since her husband’s death, she had resisted all offers of remarriage, and it was also bruited about that it was because she enjoyed taking her pleasure where she listed, although Henry was of the opinion that people would say such things about such a lovely widow.

Now he was not so sure. His eyes locked for a moment with the countess’s, then the moment passed and she and her companion dipped into quick curtsies and hurried on. But his blood was up. He was furious with Eleanor for questioning his rights in Aquitaine— again —and powerfully intrigued by the enigmatic Rohese. He’d long admired her from afar but had never quite seen in those slanting green eyes and pouting lips what other men had. There was something almost childlike about the woman, although the look she had just given him was anything but childlike. Now he could see what had made her so admired—and the promise in that brief moment of eye contact had fired his imagination.

That evening, after supper, he sought her out, and finally came upon her standing, wrapped in her cloak, gazing out over the battlements at the green fields of the Cotentin below.

“I thought you would come, my Lord King,” she said in a modulated, mellow voice. Again her eyes met his, boldly, vibrant with promise.

“People speak truth when they say you are beautiful,” Henry told her. “My wife is beautiful too, but in a different way, and I like variety.”

She came to him then, and he folded her in his strong arms. Both of them were trembling with desire.

“I want you,” Henry muttered gruffly against her veil. His hands delved inside her cloak, roved eagerly over firm breasts and hips. Rohese parted those full lips for him to kiss, and he obliged, tenderly at first, then hungrily, devouringly …

When they had taken their fill of each other, Henry returned alone to his bedchamber thinking how marvelous it had been simply to swive a woman without the added complications of having to enter into any other congress or pay heed to her whims. He loved Eleanor, there was no question about that in his mind, but she would insist on prolonging these endless, fruitless power struggles, and interfering in matters that were not her concern. He valued her judgment, of course he did, but only up to a point. She was a woman, God damn her, and as his wife, she owed him due obedience; he thought he had been unusually generous in allowing her some say in the governance of his domains.

He was still angry with her. Her denying him her bed yet rankled. Not that he would have sought it after their quarrel, but it was his right! It infuriated him that she had such scant regard for his rights. Sleeping with the beautiful Rohese had been his means of taking revenge on her, and he meant to go on exacting that sweet revenge. Even if Eleanor never got to know about it, he would enjoy his victory in private!

He lay down in his bed. His body was sated and ready for sleep, but his mind was strangely ill at ease. He was a plain man, a direct man, so this puzzled him. It would not have occurred to him to feel guilty for betraying his wife.

It was some time, in fact, before he realized that what he was feeling was an odd sense of loss.

They were keeping Easter at Falaise, the birthplace of the Conqueror, and the court was lodged in the massive fortress that dominated the town from its high position on the escarpment overlooking the River Ante.

“This was where William’s father, Duke Robert the Magnificent, was staying when he espied the woman Herleva,” Henry told Eleanor as they stood in the bailey staring up at the great buttressed keep with its Romanesque windows. “She was extraordinarily beautiful.” When he mentioned Herleva, he was thinking of Rohese.

“I heard he was called Robert the Devil,” Eleanor said wryly.

“Indeed he was, at least to begin with.” Henry grinned. “You see, I am doubly descended from the Devil!”

Eleanor made a face. “I can believe that!” she said, a touch tartly. “Wasn’t Herleva meant to be washing clothes in the river at the time?”

“She was, or so the story goes. She was a tanner’s daughter from the town. The duke saw her and fell in love instantly. She bore him two children. He couldn’t marry her, of course, as he had a wife already, so their son was called William the Bastard before his victories earned him the name of Conqueror.”

They strolled around the bailey and entered the little Chapel of St. Prix, where Henry pointed to an iron-studded door.

“That leads to the crypt, where I store some of my treasure. There are only two keys. I have one—and Thomas has the other.”