Alison Weir - Captive Queen

“You and I are finished, but my sons are yet young,” he said. “By reason of their age, they are easily swayed by their emotions and misplaced loyalty. I am beginning to suspect that a certain red-haired fox has corrupted them with bad advice and stolen them away from me. Isn’t that so, Eleanor?” His grip tightened.

“You are a fool, Henry,” she told him with scorn. “You delude yourself. You are the cause of this tragedy.”

“No, I am not a fool, or deluded,” he insisted. “I can see clearly that my own wife has turned against me and told her sons to persecute me.”

“You are sick!” she cried, and twisting free, ran down the stairs.

She could not face going to bed. Instead, she found herself pacing up and down in those same cloisters where she had confided her concerns to Raoul de Faye. Within her, the tempest raged. They were destroying each other, she and Henry, and there was no help for them. Since Becket’s death he had changed, coarsened, become abrupt and unkind. He had betrayed her, abused her, and slighted her; he had said cruel, unforgivable things. She would not believe them, she must not …

“Eleanor?” A man slipped out of the shadows. It was Raymond of Toulouse, his face full of concern—and something else that she recognized as desire. “Forgive me for intruding, but you are troubled. Can I help?”

How long had he been there? Had he been waiting in the hope of waylaying her? He had been bold indeed to address her by her given name rather than her title. What could that betoken but amorous interest? And how had he guessed that nothing could have been more welcome to her wounded soul on this terrible night?

She went to him unspeaking, finding refuge in his arms, and sweet pleasure in his kiss. Afterward, having stolen furtively up with him to his chamber, she watched his eyes roving over her as she disrobed, then lay naked on his bed, and knew that she was not the aging harridan that Henry had so cruelly called her. Ah, it was bliss to feel her body come alive again after so long, to shiver under a man’s caress, and squeeze eager fingers around his virile member, surprising herself by the erotic response deep inside her. She could not be old if she felt like this, she told herself, as Raymond rolled and tumbled her on disarrayed sheets, riding her vigorously until she cried out in pleasure that was almost pain.

When it was over, and he had subsided, panting, beside her, she tried to tell herself that sex had been better with him than with Henry, but her self-delusion lacked conviction. Henry had been by far the more accomplished lover—she was honest enough to concede that. But what had most struck her had been the strangeness of it, the predominance of physicality and the lack of emotion. She was forced to admit to herself that there was nothing so erotic as the touch of a familiar, loved body, and the meeting of true minds.

She fought back tears, angry with herself for allowing sentiment to get the better of her. Why must she continually chase this fantasy of re-creating the past, when the past had probably never been as good as she remembered? Even Henry had told her that, in his usual brutal fashion. We can never go back, she said inwardly to herself. There will be no more second chances for us. We are different people now, shaped and honed by our experiences, with scars that even time cannot heal. Where there was love, there can now only be hatred. Henry and I seem fated to destroy the good in our lives, and we will no doubt end up destroying each other. What happened to us, she cried silently, that we should have become such enemies?

“What is troubling you, sweet lady?” her new lover asked suddenly, snuggling up to her under the heap of furs. So emotional did Eleanor feel that she poured out the whole sorry tale of the rift in her family, even confessing how she had written to Louis.

“Some might call it treason, but truly I did not intend it that way.”

Raymond was silent for a moment. “I understand,” he said at length, “although many would not. Yet I think you are right to support your sons.”

“I suppose this night is another betrayal.” Eleanor smiled sadly. Her lover immediately sat up, his black-haired body lean and muscular in the candlelight.

“Don’t tell me you have never lain with another,” he exclaimed. “You, with your reputation.”

“This is the first time since I married my lord,” Eleanor confessed. “And the first time I have known a man in more than two years.”

There was a disconcerting pause.

“Why me, then?” Raymond seemed shocked.

“Nothing could have seemed more right at the time,” she told him, fearing that things were going badly wrong.

“But I assumed that you and the King had long had an arrangement to go your own ways in such matters. The way you flirted with me, and led me on … I thought he knew you had amours.” Already, he was moving away from her in the bed. “God’s blood, what have I done? I swore fealty to my overlord today, and here I am, already breaking my oath, and dishonoring my suzerain by bedding his wife. And you let me! My lady, you talk of betrayals, but it seems to me you know not what the word means. Yes, this is betrayal—and you are to blame!” With that, Raymond leaped from the bed, pulled on his robe, and held open the door. Furious and ashamed, Eleanor struggled into her gown, threw her cloak over it, and swept past him, her cheeks burning.

“I will say no more of this, on my honor,” he called after her.

“Who are you to talk of honor?” she muttered under her breath.

——

Having crept back to her bower and woken her sleeping ladies, explaining that she had been kept late with her lord—and how true that was!—Eleanor lay sleepless, hating herself for what she had done, and knowing in her heart that after all these years of fidelity, she had now broken most of her marriage vows, and humiliated herself before a man who was one of her vassals. Worse still, she had revealed to him dangerous secrets. Could she count on Raymond to keep his word? Would he say no more of it, as he had promised? He would know that concealing treason was almost as bad as committing it. And if Henry found out any of this, his vengeance would be terrible; she knew it. She lay shaking in her bed, just thinking about it.

She was filled with self-loathing, yet she hated Henry more, for having been the cause of this unholy mess. And she hated Raymond too, for sinning with her and then holding her to blame. Yet deep inside her, she was secretly pleased that she’d had her small revenge on her husband—even if he never got to hear of it. It would be her private triumph, proof that she could fight back—and that she still had what it took to seduce men, despite the cruel things Henry had said of her. And she was still convinced that she was right to take up her sons’ cause, and that, if necessary, force—and any other means possible—must be used to make the King see reason.

Henry looked up from his book—it was a favorite, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain , and he was in the habit of reading it again and again because it contained the stirring stories of King Arthur, which he loved. Today, Geoffrey’s history was affording him a brief refuge from the maelstrom of troubles that surged around him, so he was irritated to hear a knock at the door.

“Enter!” he barked, and Count Raymond of Toulouse came in.

“Sire? I was told I might find you here. Might I have a private word with you?”

Cursing inwardly, Henry laid down his book. “Sit down, my lord,” he invited grudgingly. Raymond obeyed, then sat there, looking uncomfortable—and curiously flushed.

“Yes?” Henry prompted.

“Sire,” the count blurted out, “the court is busy with gossip, and I am hearing strange things that I think you should be told. May I speak freely?”