When Christ and His Saints Slept

51

Poitiers, Poitou

May 1152

Petronilla found Eleanor up on the battlements of the palace keep. The sky was streaking and the Rivers Clain and Boivre curved around the city like flowing ribbons of gold, but the light had yet to fade. Following Eleanor’s gaze toward the north, Petronilla saw what had drawn her eyes: a small band of fast-riding horsemen, leaving a trail of dust in their wake as they approached the Pont de Rochereuil. “Eleanor…you think that is Harry?”

Eleanor nodded. “He said he’d be arriving on Whitsunday Eve, late in the day, between Vespers and Compline.”

“Yes, but surely he’d have a more impressive escort than that?”

“Jesu forfend,” Eleanor said emphatically. “The last thing we want is to attract attention ere we’re safely wed. He said he’d bring just enough men to fend off robbers, traveling as inconspicuously as possible.” She kept her eyes intently upon those distant riders, who were now passing the abbey of St Jean de Montierneuf. “Although I doubt that he’d have brought a large retinue in any event. He does not seem to care much for pomp and ceremony.”

“A son of the Empress Maude? If that is so, he must be a changeling!” When Eleanor failed even to acknowledge the jest, Petronilla subjected her sister to a closer scrutiny. “Eleanor…are you having misgivings?”

“Not about the man, Petra. But the marriage…yes, a few misgivings.”

Petronilla was not taken totally by surprise, for she’d noticed that Eleanor had become more and more preoccupied and pensive as her wedding day drew near. “Why?”

Eleanor was quiet for a few moments. “I suppose,” she said, “because of the past two months, two months in which I was accountable to no man for what I did or what I wanted. I’ve never had freedom like that before, and I found it a sweet taste, indeed…”

“But what good is freedom without security, Eleanor? You need a man to protect Aquitaine from the French Crown and to protect you from those hordes of would-be husbands, eager to share your domains with you, whether you willed it or not.”

“You need not fret, Petra. I am not about to leave Harry at the altar. You are right-I do need a man for the very practical reasons you’ve just argued. And for reasons you did not mention. I want more children. I want a man in my bed again, one who has more in mind than prayer. And I want a crown, I’ll not deny it. All of which I’ve a good chance of getting from Harry.”

Sure now that it was indeed her future husband who was entering her city, Eleanor moved away from the battlements, for she wanted to be below in the great hall to greet him upon his arrival. “I just wish,” she said, with a skepticism that held an oddly wistful note, too, “that the balance of power in a marriage was not tilted so much in the man’s favor.”

Henry could not seem to get comfortable in the bed. For the tenth time, he repositioned his pillow. When he flung the sheets back, he soon felt chilled, but when he drew the covers up, he was too hot. By his increasingly exasperated reckoning, it was well past midnight. This sleepless night before his wedding was shaping up to be the longest one of his entire life.

In less than twelve hours, he and Eleanor were to be wed in the cathedral of St Pierre. She’d made all the arrangements, leaving him nothing to do but show up. He could see the sense in it, for Poitiers was her capital city. He just wasn’t accustomed to being a bystander, marching to a drumbeat not his own.

Their wedding was to be a simple affair, not at all the sort of lavish royal spectacle that would normally have attended the marriage of a Duke of Normandy and a Duchess of Aquitaine, a onetime queen and a would-be king. Henry remembered hearing that when Eleanor and the French king wed, the revelries had lasted for three full days. But for them, there would be nothing so extravagant or elaborate, just a wedding supper after the church ceremony, for had they invited all their vassals to celebrate their wedding, as would be customary, they’d have risked having their nuptials interrupted by an invading French army.

Henry hoped that Eleanor did not feel cheated. Mayhap one royal wedding in a woman’s lifetime was enough for her. For himself, he did not care. He’d always been more interested in where he was going than in how he got there. And even if he’d been one to enjoy such prolonged and high-flown festivities, not here, not now, not in this company for certes.

Eleanor had summoned a few of her most eminent vassals to bear witness to her wedding, those men too devoted or too proud to learn of her marriage after-the-fact. Geoffrey de Rancon, Lord of Taillebourg. Saldebreuil de Sanzay, formerly Eleanor’s constable, newly named as her seneschal. The lords of Lusignan and Thourars. The Count of Angouleme. They’d not liked Eleanor’s first marriage to the French king, and it soon became obvious to Henry that they were not enthusiastic about her second match, either. Their courtesy was cold enough to threaten frostbite, and they watched him as warily as sheepdogs protecting their flocks from a marauding Angevin wolf.

Henry was surprised neither by their suspicions nor by their audacity, for these southern barons were known for their recalcitrance and prickly independence. While they were celebrated for their generosity and humor and joyful zest for life, their conviction that Aquitaine was Eden and they God’s Chosen People had given them a sense of moral superiority that their neighbors often found intolerable.

It had been Geoffrey’s acerbic opinion that the Aquitanians were an ungovernable lot, ready to rebel at any pretext, not in the least awed by authority, as quick to quarrel as they were to laugh. How much of his father’s caustic appraisal was true, Henry had yet to judge. He did not doubt, though, that Eleanor’s vassals would gladly give him as much grief as they’d given Louis-if he let them.

But if he’d anticipated some initial resistance from Eleanor’s barons, he’d not expected trouble from her family. In addition to her sister, she’d invited her maternal uncles, Hugh de Chatellerault and Raoul de Faye, and her illegitimate half-brothers, William and Joscelin, and from them he’d gotten something he’d never encountered before and was utterly unprepared for-condescension.

Shoving his pillow back against the headboard, Henry found himself remembering a story Ranulf had once told, of a man supposedly shot by his own arrow when it ricocheted off a tree. He hadn’t believed it then-or now-but he did feel as if his surprise for Eleanor had somehow rebounded upon him, too. Thinking that his bride would surely be pleased to discover on her wedding night that he could speak her native tongue, he’d made an effort to learn the dialect of the South known as langue d’oc, or Provencal. As he’d always had a good ear for languages, he’d soon picked up enough to impress Eleanor-and also to understand the smug conversational currents flowing around him.

Unlike her barons, Eleanor’s kin had welcomed him with expansive goodwill-to his face. But behind his back, they laughed and jested in their own tongue, always at his expense. They joked about his inferior bloodlines, debating which was worse, having an Angevin sire or a Norman-Scots dam. They boasted to Henry that Eleanor was descended from Charlemagne, and then snickered to one another about the Demon Countess of Anjou, the Devil’s daughter. They lavished compliments upon Henry and then mocked his short hair, calling him a shorn sheep, for all men of fashion wore theirs shoulder-length.

Henry was able to shrug off their supercilious comments about his heritage, reasoning that if they’d not thought the King of France good enough for Eleanor, it was only to be expected that he’d fall short, too. And as he cared nothing for fashion, he could not be wounded by disapproval of that sort. But it stung his pride to be treated like a raw, green lad. It had never occurred to him that Eleanor’s family might see their clandestine courtship as a hunt, their wedding as the kill, and Eleanor as the hunter, he the quarry. Did these dolts truly think that nineteen was so young, that their age difference gave Eleanor such an advantage? Did Eleanor?

And that was the real reason why he lay awake and restless hours after going to bed. Eleanor. Not her unruly barons, not even her vexing relatives. Eleanor.

She’d welcomed him as if he were the most honoured of guests, gracious and obliging, concerned for his comfort. He’d caught her in no indiscretions, no lapses in langue d’oc. She’d been the ideal hostess, poised and polished, as regal in bearing as if that lovely dark head were still adorned with a crown. But as much as he admired her social graces, he looked in vain for the woman he would wed. The teasing temptress in that rain-drenched Paris garden was gone, eclipsed by the Duchess of Aquitaine, worldly and desirable and distant.

He supposed he could not blame her if she was suffering a few eleventh-hour qualms. Watching her entertain him with such impersonal perfection, he’d found himself thinking of an old adage: A burnt child dreads the fire. After fourteen years with St Louis, most of them miserable, was it any wonder that she might be skittish of marriage? Who would understand that better than he? For much of his life, he’d been an unwilling eyewitness to the carnage-strewn battlefield that was his parents’ marriage, hostage to their embittered and irreconcilable demands.

He’d found it easy enough to reassure himself that if Eleanor was indeed having some doubts, it was only to be expected. But if he was so sure of that, why was he unable to sleep? He refused to believe he might be nervous. The one and only time he’d ever experienced anxiety over bedsport was before his first sexual encounter, at age fourteen. He’d never expected to feel such unease again. But he’d never lain with a woman as seductive and highborn and daunting as Eleanor. His bedmates had been numerous, for he rarely slept alone. But they were usually bedazzled village girls or high-paid harlots. Never a queen, one of the greatest beauties in Christendom.

He’d sometimes felt sorry for women, as they seemed to have a much harder row to hoe than men. What man could be more strong-willed or daring than his mother? A king’s daughter, an empress, a would-be queen in her own right, she’d still been expected to obey his father, and had lost every major battle of their marital wars. It was not that Henry thought women should be given an equal say in the matters of men; he could not imagine anyone making an argument that preposterous. He could not help sympathizing with their plight, nonetheless, for he could envision few fates worse than to be utterly powerless. But as he tossed and turned in one of Eleanor’s guest bedchambers, he discovered that women were not as powerless as he’d often thought. Eleanor’s weapon might be a smile instead of a sword, but she could wreak her own sort of havoc, for certes. How else explain why he was still lying awake in the early hours of this, his wedding day?

Henry and Eleanor were married that Whitsunday afternoon, out in the spring sunlight by the door of the cathedral church of St Pierre. The churchyard was thronged with excited, jostling spectators, for word had soon spread through the city and people turned out in large numbers to watch their lady wed.

Standing before the Bishop of Poitiers, Henry had eyes only for his bride. Eleanor’s wedding gown was form-fitting to the hips, with a swirling full skirt and train, sleeves tight to the elbow and then billowing out in graceful hanging cuffs. The material was a richly woven silk brocade, a deep, dusky shade of gold. Her hair was plaited into two long braids, entwined with gold-thread ribbons, her veil as light as sunlight and almost as transparent, held in place by a gleaming coronet. She wore his bride-gift on her right hand, an emerald ring of beaten gold. The jewel had reminded him of her eyes, but today her hazel irises reflected the color of her gown, taking on a tawny, amber glow.

Cat’s eyes, he thought, giving away no secrets, and slipped the wedding band onto each of her fingers in turn before sliding it down onto the third finger of her left hand, the one judged closest to the heart. Having promised before man and God to cleave unto this beautiful stranger from this day forth, till “death us do part,” he said, “With this ring, I thee wed,” and as a loud burst of cheering rocked the churchyard, he could only hope that this was indeed well done.

Upon their return to Eleanor’s palace, Henry was not pleased to find that the trestle tables had not yet been set up in the great hall. It seemed there was to be dancing before the meal began. Since there would also be entertainment afterward, this meant that the festivities would last till well past dark. He wanted nothing so much as to be alone with Eleanor, to discover again the woman who’d bewitched him in the royal gardens of the Cite Palace, but that would be hours away. Till then, he would have to curb his impatience, politely put up with her barons and family as best he could.

He did try. He would later-much later-insist to Eleanor that he’d acted in good faith, striving to play the part expected of him, that of the eager, joyful bridegroom. Eager he was, without doubt. Joyful…no. He was too tense, too irritated by his new in-laws for genuine joy. But he would have been able to give a reasonably convincing performance-if only he’d not understood langue d’oc.

In his boyhood, one of his favorite stories was of a young man who found a magical cloak, one that rendered him invisible whenever he wore it. Henry had been fascinated by the folktale, but he’d never realized that such a power might be a two-edged sword. Hearing what was not meant for his ears was not a pleasurable experience. The jokes were ribald and forthright in French, but far more offensive in Provencal. Normally he’d have taken the teasing in stride, for that was every bridegroom’s lot. But his sense of humor seemed to have decamped in the night. He could deflect the bawdy jokes aimed at him; he was not easily embarrassed. But the private jesting by Eleanor’s brothers and uncles could not be laughed off, for their mockery was premised upon a highly insulting assumption-that Eleanor would soon have him jumping through hoops and begging for favors like a lady’s spaniel lapdog.

He danced several carols with Eleanor, chatted amiably with Petronilla, the only member of his wife’s family he could abide, and listened with feigned enthusiasm to a song by the troubadour and poet Bernard de Ventadour, one too lavish in praise of Eleanor’s beauty for his liking. Bored and tired and increasingly restive, he found it helped to fortify himself with the free-flowing wine, although he was usually a very sparing drinker. Accepting his third cup of spiced hippocras, he traded thinly veiled barbs with Geoffrey de Rancon. He’d not met Rancon before Poitiers, but the man was known to him; he’d heard the sorry saga of Rancon’s deadly blunder on the march toward Jerusalem, one that had caused the deaths of countless crusaders.

Rancon had been ordered by the French king to halt at the summit of Mount Cadmos, but he’d chosen to disregard Louis’s instructions and led the vanguard onward in search of a better campsite. The king, riding in the rear, was unaware of this, and allowed the rearward to lag behind, thinking they would soon be upon Rancon’s encampment. When the watching Turks swooped down upon them, the French panicked and the rugged mountain terrain was soon soaked in Christian blood. The king himself had narrowly escaped death, and although Eleanor remained steadfastly loyal to her beleaguered vassal, Geoffrey de Rancon had been sent home in disgrace.

Henry was not well disposed toward any man so cavalier about disobeying a royal command, convinced that inevitably led to anarchy, to Stephen’s England. Excusing himself as soon as he could, he was turning to look for Eleanor when he heard her brothers laughing behind him.

“There he goes, on her scent again. I’d wager that in no time at all, she’ll have the lad heeling and going down on command, without even needing a leash!”

“Well, early training works wonders with greyhound pups, fledgling hawks, and yearling colts, Will, so why not with young husbands? It is just a matter of using the right bait!”

Under other circumstances, Henry might have reacted with indifference or annoyance, depending upon his mood. Now he swung around with an oath, his temper flaring up so fast that he had no chance at all of quenching it. Anger long-smoldering took only seconds to become a conflagration.

Eleanor had been slow to realize that something was troubling her new husband, distracted in part by her obligations as hostess and in part by her own edginess about the marriage. Nor did she find it easy to read Henry. He was not like Louis, whose face was a faithful mirror for his every thought. No…Harry was going to be more of a challenge. She was sure he’d give away clues; all men did. But it might take her a while to learn to recognize them.

It was not until their return from the church that she’d begun to sense something was amiss. She’d noticed at breakfast that Henry looked as if he’d slept poorly, but she’d taken his wakefulness as a compliment. Watching him as they danced, though, she’d concluded that he was not enjoying himself. She would have to make sure that the festivities did not drag on too long. She did not know yet how she’d manage that, but she’d find a way. This marriage had to succeed; there was too much at stake.

Declining an offer to join in the circle forming for the next carol, she beckoned to her sister. “Have you seen Harry?”

“Over there, with Will and Joscelin.”

One glance was enough to alert Eleanor to trouble. Henry’s back was to her, but her brothers looked as if they’d been caught bloody-handed over a dead body. She headed toward them, but Henry was already stalking away. “Wait,” she cried out before her brothers could bolt. “The pair of you look guiltier than horse thieves. What happened?”

They exchanged uncomfortable looks. Will shook his head, almost imperceptibly, but Joscelin refused to take the hint. “We have to tell her, Will,” he insisted. “Better she hears it from us.”

Eleanor did not like the sound of that at all. “For the love of God, Jos! Just say it straight out.”

“Eleanor…he understands langue d’oc!”

“Oh, no…” Eleanor stared at them in dismay. If Harry had heard even half of the jokes floating around the hall…“What did you say, Jos? Will?”

Will shrugged, refusing to meet her eyes. Looking shamefaced, Joscelin mumbled, “We were jesting. He ought to have let us know he spoke our tongue.” Squirming under his sister’s accusing eyes, he glanced toward Will for help, got none, and sighed. “We…well, we joked that he’d soon be following you about like one of your greyhounds, or words to that effect…”

Eleanor was not mollified, realizing she’d just been given a cleaned-up version of what Henry had overheard. “I’ve never had a taste for watered-down wine, Jos,” she warned. “How can I make amends unless I know just how grievously you offended him? Try the truth this time.”

But at that moment, there was a stir throughout the hall. The musicians had stopped in the midst of the carol. The dancers halted in puzzlement, the musicians looking apologetically in Eleanor’s direction. She knew they would not have ceased playing so abruptly unless ordered to do so, and there were just two people present with the authority to give such a command. Gathering up her skirts, she started hastily toward her husband. But she was too late; Henry was already mounting the steps of the dais.

Standing alone upon the dais, Henry soon attracted attention. He waited, though, until all eyes were upon him. “The dancing will resume in a few moments,” he said, and startled murmurs rippled across the hall, for he’d spoken in their tongue. Having made his point, he switched then to French, for he understood Provencal better than he spoke it. “My lady duchess and I would like to thank you for celebrating our wedding with us. We hope that you enjoy yourselves during the dancing and the feasting to follow. But I prefer to have a private wedding supper with my beautiful wife. Judging from what I’ve been hearing in this hall, I am quite sure that you will understand.”

Never had Henry seen a crowd fall silent so fast. It was suddenly and utterly still. From his vantage point upon the dais, he could see shocked faces, abashed and uneasy looks as people tried to recall whether they’d compromised themselves in his hearing. He was depriving the guests of the favorite part of any wedding celebration, the boisterous bedding-down revelries. But there were no protests, no objections. His last statement had been a threat, sheathed but with a sharp blade, withal. As he had said, they understood perfectly.

By now he’d located Eleanor, standing a few feet away. She was looking up at him in astonishment, eyes wide, lips parted, at a rare loss for words. Before she could recover from her surprise, he came swiftly down the dais steps, holding out his hand. She took it and the guests moved aside to let them pass. The spell held; not until they’d exited the hall did bedlam break out behind them.

Henry’s anger had been too hot not to have soon burned itself out. It was already cooling by the time he stepped from the dais, and now he found himself surrounded by charred embers and ashes, wondering how such a brief fire could have done so much damage. Eleanor was walking sedately at his side, her fingers still linked in his, deceptively docile. But she was no more submissive a wife than his mother had been, and while he was grateful for her public compliance, he was not deceived by it. He’d dragged her away from her own wedding feast, and even if he’d not said so plain out, not a soul in the hall doubted his intent-that he was not willing to wait any longer to take his wife to bed. If Geoffrey had done that to his mother, Maude would have been mortified-and she’d never have forgiven him, not in this life or the next. That Henry knew with a chilling certainty. What sort of a start had he gotten their marriage off to?

By the time they’d reached the stairwell leading up to their wedding chamber in the Maubergeon Tower, he’d faced a hard truth. At the very least, he owed her an apology. And if that was not enough for her, he’d have to abase himself if need be, no matter how painful that was to his pride, for her grievance was a just one.

A smoking rushlight in an overhead wall sconce dispersed some of the darkness in the stairwell. Eleanor stumbled over her trailing skirts, and when Henry reached out to steady her, she said suddenly, “I still cannot believe you truly did that!”

He stiffened, then turned to face her. “I know you must be angry, Eleanor, but-”

He got no further. With a rustle of silk and an elusive scent of unnamed, exotic flowers, she was beside him on the stair, her arms going up around his neck. “Why ever should I be angry? You did enliven the festivities for certes, gave our guests enough to talk about for days to come, and showed my barons that you’re a man who knows what he wants-and when he wants it, by God!” Her laugh was low, her amusement too genuine to doubt. But Henry could not quite believe his luck.

“You truly are not wroth with me? Whilst I had good cause for my anger, I never meant to shame you, that I swear upon the surety of my soul.”

“Harry…it does not shame a woman that her husband wants her. It only shames her if he does not.”

“I do want you,” he said, with a shaken laugh. “You have no idea how much!”

When she smiled, he kissed her. This was not the chaste Kiss of Peace they’d exchanged in the cathedral. It was one to fire the blood and bring men to ruin. No matter how close he held her, it was not close enough. Her breath was hot against his ear, her fingers entwined in his hair. She tasted of wine and temptation, her kisses as hungry as his own, and he forgot time and place and the world beyond her embrace, aware only of this moment and the woman in his arms and the need to make her his.

It was the sound of rending silk that brought Eleanor back to reality. “Harry…Harry, wait,” she gasped. “Let me catch my breath…”

His own breath was coming in short, uneven bursts, too. As he drew back, his shoe struck something metallic. Bending down, he retrieved her coronet, and they both laughed, for neither one could remember when it had been discarded. “Whenever I thought about our wedding night,” he said, “I never saw myself ravishing you in a stairwell…”

“Well, then,” she said, “let’s find ourselves a bed.”

They continued climbing the stairs, pausing every few steps to kiss again. When they finally reached the door, Henry said, “Wait. Let’s do this right.” And before she realized what he was about, he caught her up into his arms, carried her over the threshold, and across the chamber to their marriage bed. Given the urgency he’d shown in the stairwell, Eleanor expected him to join her at once in the bed. To her surprise, he moved away.

“You are not going to quench the candles, are you?” she asked, hoping he was not. Louis had always insisted upon making love in the dark.

“Jesu, no!” He gave her a startled smile over his shoulder. “Who wants to fumble around in the dark? I suppose that works well enough for bats, but not for me.”

Fortunately, Eleanor’s servants had already made the chamber ready for them. Wood was stacked in the hearth, to be fired if need be. The floor was strewn with fresh rushes, intermingled with fragrant herbs like sweet woodruff and costmary. Knowing how she loved flowers, Colette and Yolande had filled the room with bouquets of periwinkle and violets and even a few early-blooming white roses. A flagon of wine and two gemencrusted goblets had been set out upon the table, and after he slid the door’s bolt into place, Henry poured wine into one of the goblets and carried it back to the bed.

“To our union,” he said, holding out the cup. She saluted his wordplay with a smile, took a sip and passed the cup back. He sat beside her upon the bed, and they took turns drinking, watching each other avidly all the while. Eleanor was pleased that he no longer seemed in such a hurry, reassured that he could exercise this sort of self-control. Would he be as good a lover as his passion promised? So much she did not know about him, so much they both had to discover. But what she’d learned so far, she liked-very much, indeed. Handing Henry the goblet, she began to unbraid her hair.

Once her hair was free, she shook her head until it drifted about her shoulders in a dark, glossy cloud, making her look even more desirable and wanton than in Henry’s most erotic dreams. “The first time I saw you, there in your husband’s hall ere half the French court, I’d have bartered my soul to have you here like this, in my bed.”

“You can keep your soul,” she assured him, reclining back against the pillows in a pose that was both playful and provocative. “I’ll settle for your body, my lord husband.”

Henry laughed, and when she started to unlace her gown, he caught her hand in his. “No,” he said, “let me.” Eleanor lifted her hair up out of the way and he soon had the laces loosened, so deftly done that she knew he’d had some practice at this. Her gown had gotten a small tear in that frenzied embrace out in the stairwell, and it tore still further as he drew it over her head, but he offered no apology, for he was learning what mattered to her and what did not. Her chemise was of silk, too, ivory-white and as soft as her skin. Her shoes were a patterned Spanish leather, slit over her instep and fastened with an ankle thong, her stockings gartered above the knee with beribboned scarlet ties. Watching him through her lashes as he slid a stocking down her leg, she murmured, “Now I know what a birthday present feels like as it is being unwrapped.”

“Some gifts are worth taking time and trouble with.” Leaning forward, he kissed her again, and then slowly and deliberately removed her last garment. As the chemise fluttered down to the floor, his breath quickened. “Helen of Troy must have looked like you,” he said, and she laughed softly.

“That is a pretty compliment,” she said, “and I like it well. I like even better what I see in your eyes. We’ve waited a long time for this night, Harry, but there is no need to wait any longer.” He was in full agreement with her, already jerking at his belt. As he started to strip off his tunic, she reached over to help him, saying, “My turn.”

“Next time, love. I can do it much faster!” This he proceeded to prove, as tunic and shirt went sailing across the room. His chausses were short, reaching to the knee, and quickly disposed of. That left only the linen braies, and as he slid them down over his hips, he grinned, saying, “This you can help with, love!” Marveling at how very different were the men she’d married, Eleanor did.

Eleanor was realistic enough to be aware that their first lovemaking might be less than perfect. They might well need time for their bodies to become attuned, to discover what pleased each other, to trust enough to let down their defenses. As drawn as she was to Henry, she had no way of knowing what sort of lover he would be, not until they were in bed together on their wedding night. And if she’d misjudged him, by then it would be too late. She was sure he’d need no coaxing, for he was young and hot-blooded. But he might still prove to be a selfish lover, one intent only upon his own pleasures. Or too quick, too eager, spilling his seed too soon. Because she found that such a troubling prospect, she’d labored to rein in her expectations, reminding herself that a wedding-night disappointment did not mean marital disaster. They could adapt, they could learn. He was not like Louis.

She soon discovered that she need not have worried. Making love with her new husband was as natural and easy as breathing, as satisfying and sensual an experience as she could ever have hoped for. There was not much tenderness in this initial coupling; they were both too aroused for that. What happened between them was impassioned, intense, and white-hot, like falling into a fire and somehow emerging unscathed. That was Eleanor’s first coherent thought afterward. She lay very still, loath to let Henry go even though he was no longer supporting his weight with his elbows, having collapsed on top of her as he reached his climax. She could hear the hammering of his heart, feel sweat trickling down between their bodies. It was not particularly comfortable, but she would have been content to stay like that for some time to come. When he finally lifted himself up, she felt bereft as he withdrew, and protested, “No, not yet…”

“I must be squashing you,” he insisted, rolling over onto his back. His voice was normally hoarse and low-pitched, but now it had taken on a husky rasp, his words coming out slow and scratchy. Turning his head on the pillow so he could look at her, he said, “Good God, woman…” Eleanor smiled without opening her eyes.

“Well put,” she agreed, and after a few more moments, he groped for her hand, kissing her palm.

“Forget what I told you in Paris,” he said. “I would have married you without Aquitaine…”

“You are a gallant liar,” she said, and he laughed. He seemed to be reviving faster than she was. Leaning over, he kissed the corner of her mouth, then reached down to recover their wine cup from the floor rushes. Finding it empty, he swung off the bed for a refill, pausing to snatch up a towel along the way. Back in bed, he shared both with Eleanor, trading sips as he patted her dry and then rubbed himself, far more vigorously.

Eleanor stretched lithely, propping their pillows behind her back. “It seems ungracious to complain after you just gave me the most memorable wedding night any woman ever had,” she said. “But you also abducted me from our wedding supper ere I could get even a crust of bread.”

“I’ve never yet let a hostage of mine starve.” Rising from the bed again, he strode over to ring for a servant. Eleanor enjoyed watching him, for he was so comfortable in his nakedness, so utterly unself-conscious, so unlike Louis. She wondered how long it would be ere she stopped comparing them, how long ere Louis’s spectre faded into insignificance. She did not think Harry would leave room in his marriage for any other man, even a memory.

A servant soon came in response to the summons, and Henry opened the door just wide enough to order supper. The chamber was strewn with their discarded clothing, and as he started back to the bed, she asked, “Do you think we ought to pick up our clothes ere they bring in the food?”

He glanced about at the telltale disarray, then shrugged. “Why? This is our wedding night. I doubt that anyone thinks we’re playing chess up here to pass the time.” But he was still pondering her query, and as he got back into bed with her, he gave her a curious, speculative look. “Was Louis one for setting up the chessboard?”

“In a manner of speaking,” she conceded. “It is only natural that people should have been so interested in what happened-or not-in our marriage bed. He was the king, after all. But that scrutiny always made him uncomfortable. He would never have allowed servants to enter our room had it looked like this one does, as if we’d undressed in a mad race for the bed.”

“That sounds like a race well worth running,” he joked, “given what is waiting at the finish line.” He had an exceptional memory, as Eleanor now discovered. “And always in the dark, too?”

She nodded, somewhat reluctantly, for she did not really want to discuss her first husband with her second. Not only did it seem a gratuitous cruelty to Louis, but she could not abide the thought that Harry might pity her, a Queen of France who’d been forced to live almost as chastely as a nun. “I cannot believe you remembered my query about the candles! I think you may be too quick for my own good.”

“Not when it truly counts,” he promised, and Eleanor rolled over into his arms, relishing another pleasure that had been scarce in her first marriage-the sweet sin of laughing together in bed.

Eleanor had never had a meal like this one, eaten in bed, a table pulled within reach so they could help themselves, for neither she nor Henry wanted servants hovering about. Henry preferred to do the honours himself, lifting the chafing dishes to offer her a spiced meatball, a taste of savory rice, a few spoonfulls of pea soup. “Your cooks must think I have a harem hidden away up here,” he said, “for they’ve sent enough to feed a dozen hungry souls. Do you want some more of the roast pheasant?”

“No…what are those dishes off to your right?”

Henry lifted the lids. “This looks like lamprey eels, in some sort of sauce, and this one has beef-marrow tarts.” When she selected the latter, he passed it to her on a napkin. “So…where were we? Ah, yes, you were telling me that your father once clashed with Abbot Bernard, too?”

Eleanor nodded. “He was not as stalwart as Geoffrey, though,” she said regretfully, “for when Abbot Bernard confronted him with the Host, he went pale as death and toppled over like a felled tree.”

“A pity,” Henry said succinctly, and Eleanor smiled fondly at him, for she found his skepticism a pleasant contrast, indeed, to Louis’s absolute certainty that Bernard was a living saint.

“I think it bodes well for our marriage,” she teased, “that we seem to dislike all the same people.” Leaning over, she fed him the last of her marrow tart. “When shall I get to meet your mother, Harry?”

“I’d not be in such a hurry if I were you,” he said wryly. “Most people find my mother to be a very formidable lady, indeed. It will be fascinating-in a scary sort of way-to watch the two of you take each other’s measure. But that is not likely to come about in the near future. Remember what I told you last night…that my English allies are growing impatient? They insist they need me in England, and cannot comprehend why I’ve kept finding excuses to put off the invasion. I just hope they understand why I could not risk telling them about our marriage plans. But I promised my uncle Rainald that I’d be at Barfleur in a fortnight and we’d start gathering a fleet.”

Eleanor was momentarily taken aback, for she’d expected that they’d have more than a fortnight together. But she could hardly complain, for it was not as if he were going off on a pleasure jaunt. “Do you want me to go with you to Barfleur?”

Henry was delighted with her matter-of-fact response. How many men were lucky enough to have a wife with such political acumen, and as seductive as Eve in the bargain? “I would love to have you with me at Barfleur,” he said, “but I need you more here, in Poitiers. I can rely upon my mother to keep watch over Normandy whilst I am in England. I want you to make sure that Aquitaine stays calm, too, Eleanor, or as calm as it ever gets.”

“I will,” she said, and he kissed her gratefully, then selected a ginger-filled wafer for them to share.

“What about your mother? Do you remember her, Eleanor?”

“Truthfully, not a lot. Aenor, she was called. Did you know that is what my name means? ‘The other Aenor.’ I was eight when she died, but I have few vivid memories of her, for she was not like your mother, Harry, not a woman to be reckoned with. She was soft-spoken, not one for drawing attention to herself. I do not think she was ever happy with my father, nor he with her. They were coerced into the marriage by my grandfather and her mother, and I can understand why they were loath to wed. It had created enough of a scandal when my grandfather carried off the wife of one of his own vassals. But then to marry his son to that woman’s daughter-you can well imagine the gossip that stirred up!”

Henry sat up so abruptly that he almost spilled his wine. “Did I hear you right? Your grandfather was having a tryst with Aenor’s mother?”

“Not just a tryst, Harry. A notorious dalliance. The lady, who had the remarkably apt name of Dangereuse, was wed to a neighboring lord, the Viscount of Chatellerault. My grandfather always did have a roving eye, and he never seemed to see marriage as much of a hindrance-his or anyone else’s.”

“I assume he already had a wife when he stole the viscount’s?”

“By then he was working on his second marriage. His first wife was a kinswoman of yours, Harry, Ermengarde, your father’s great-aunt. Fortunately for us, that marriage fell apart ere they had any children. My grandfather took as his next wife the long-suffering Lady Philippa, heiress to Toulouse. She gave him two sons and five daughters, but their marriage was no happier than his first. As he put it, he loved women too much to confine himself to just one.”

“But Dangereuse was different, not a passing fancy?”

“More like a grand passion. Philippa had put up with his straying as best she could, but his infatuation with Dangereuse could not be ignored, for after he wooed her away from her husband, he brought her right under his roof, settled her here in the Maubergeon Tower. That was too much for Philippa, and who can blame her? When my grandfather refused to send Dangereuse away, Philippa left him. She retired to Fontevrault Abbey, where-as unlikely as it seems-she became good friends with Grandpa Will’s first wife, Ermengarde, who dwelt at the nunnery whenever the whim took her. Imagine the conversations they must have had on those long winter nights!”

“I’m still mulling over the fact that your grandfather was having an affair with his son’s mother-in-law!” Henry said with a grin. “It is not as if I come from a line of monks myself. My own grandfather could have populated England with all his by-blows. But I have to admit that this grandfather of yours seems to have had a truly spectacular talent for sinning. What did the Church say about these scandalous goings-on?”

“Oh, he was often at odds with the Church, but it never bothered him unduly. In truth, Harry, nothing did. He liked to scandalize and shock people, but there was no real malice in him. As you may have guessed, I adored him. Most people did, for he had more charm than the law should allow. He did treat my grandmother rather badly-one of them, anyway! But I was too young to understand that, and by the time I did, he was long dead. What I remember most is his laughter, and I suspect that is what truly vexed his enemies, that he got so much fun out of life. He could find a joke in the most dire circumstances, as his songs attest. That shocked people, too, that a man so highborn would write troubadour poetry, but he enjoyed it and so what else mattered?”

Henry brushed back her hair. “Tell me more,” he urged, and she shivered with pleasure as he kissed the hollow of her throat.

“Well…Grandpapa Will painted an image of Dangereuse on his shield, saying he wanted to bear her in battle, just as she’d so often borne him in bed. He liked to joke that one day he’d establish his own nunnery-and fill it with ladies of easy virtue. And when he was rebuked for not praying as often as he ought, he composed a poem: ‘O Lord, let me live long enough to get my hands under her cloak.’”

Henry gave a sputter of laughter. “Between the two of us, we’ve got a family tree rooted in Hell! Once Abbot Bernard learns of our marriage, he’ll have nary a doubt that our children will have horns and cloven hooves.”

“The first one born with a tail, we’ll name after the good abbot.” Eleanor reached for a dish of strawberries in sugared syrup, popping one neatly into his mouth. He fed her the next one, and when she licked the sugar from his fingers, as daintily as a cat, his body was suddenly suffused in heat. Dipping his finger in the syrup, he coated one of her nipples. She looked startled, but intrigued, and when he lowered his mouth to her breast, she exhaled her breath in a drawn-out sigh. “Abbot Bernard preaches that sin is all around us,” she said throatily, “but I doubt that even he ever thought to warn against strawberries!”

“He’d likely have an apoplectic seizure if he only knew what can be done with honey,” Henry predicted, and Eleanor began to laugh.

“I think,” she said, “that you and I are going to have a very interesting marriage.”

Henry thought so, too. “I want you, Eleanor.”

Her eyes reflected the candle flame, but brighter and hotter, making promises that would have provided Abbot Bernard with a full year of new sermons. “My lord duke,” she said, “tonight all of Aquitaine is yours for the taking.”

They were both exhausted, but neither was ready yet to let the night go. Staving off sleep, they lay in each other’s arms, watching as the hearth flames wavered and danced and sent up white-gold sparks. Henry could not remember ever feeling so content. God truly did reward those willing to gamble. Breathing in the scent of his wife’s perfume, he nuzzled her neck and she nestled closer.

He was not at all surprised that she could fire his passion as no other woman had. But he’d not expected to feel so intensely protective. She was quite capable of taking care of herself. He’d never thought to meet a woman more self-sufficient than his mother, but here she was, her thigh resting on his, her hair tickling his chest. It was not that she needed him to take care of her; it was that he wanted to, and this was a novel sensation for him. Lust took on a new taste altogether when tenderness was added to the brew.

How had she gotten to him like this? Mayhap it was just the afterglow. It was only natural that he’d feel close to her after lovemaking like theirs. Any more heat and they’d have set the bed on fire. Or was it that any last lingering doubts about her honour had gone up in smoke? However much he’d insisted to his father that he did not believe the gossip and innuendoes and rumors, there’d been a small, dark corner of uncertainty, one he’d not acknowledged even to himself…until now.

But no more. No matter what men said of her, he knew now that she was not a wanton. She was passionate and blessedly uninhibited and ardent. But she knew none of a courtesan’s erotic tricks, those special, seductive ways of pleasuring a man that most wives never mastered. He’d lain with enough harlots to recognize practiced passion, and from harlots, that was indeed what he wanted. But not from Eleanor. He’d not wanted her to be too knowing, too artful in her caresses, for she could never have learned such skills from monkish, fettered Louis. If she had ever been unfaithful, he was sure now it had been a brief tryst, no more than that.

It was passing strange, for he ought not to care what she’d done whilst wed to another man. But he did. If tenderness was an unfamiliar emotion for him, so was this urge, too. He’d never been jealous of a bedmate before, never felt possessive of one, either. Was it because she was his wife? Was that what made it so different, so much more complicated?

“Harry…what are you thinking about?”

“Papal politics, the price of corn, whether I ought to get my stallion shoed, the usual…” he joked, while tightening his arm around her shoulders. She had the most luxuriant hair he’d ever encountered in a bedmate; he could not keep his hands away from it, running its silkiness through his fingers, wondering why men found blonde hair so alluring. It reached well past her hips, ebony in the night shadows, a deep rich brown whenever the firelight played upon it. Separating a long, gleaming strand, he entwined it around his fingers, looping it about his wrist.

Her lashes flickered. “Are you worried that I might run off whilst you sleep?”

“I just want to keep you close,” he said, and she smiled drowsily.

“You need not worry, Harry,” she said. “I’ll not stray…”

Eustace had moved to the open window, watching the river traffic on the Seine. Behind his back, the French king exchanged puzzled looks with his brother Robert and his cousin Raoul. Louis was as surprised as anyone by Eustace’s unexpected arrival in Paris. He must have left England within a few days of his mother’s funeral, which bespoke an unseemly haste to Louis. Moreover, his presence was something of an embarrassment now that Louis had made peace with his rival the Duke of Normandy. The other men in the chamber were regarding Eustace with no favor, for he had few friends at court. But he had to be made welcome. They could hardly turn away the Count of Boulogne, the French king’s brother-in-law.

Eustace was well aware that these men liked him not. But he harbored no goodwill toward most of them, either. While he’d always been on civil terms with the French king, he could not respect a man so weak-willed. Louis’s blustery brother the Count of Dreux he disliked heartily, an antagonism Robert returned in full measure. Nor did he think much of Louis’s dissolute kinsman Raoul de Peronne. Raoul’s courtesy too often held a hidden sting, a hinted smugness that Eustace found infuriating, coming as it did from a man who’d made a fool of himself over a slut young enough to be his daughter. He had no reason to think badly of the Templar, Thierry Galeran, and he did not know Hugh de Champfleury, Louis’s new chancellor. As for Waleran Beaumont, the less said of him, the better; Eustace would never forgive him for going over to Maude. And these were the men whose voices Louis most heeded? If so, no wonder his brother-in-law seemed to lurch from one blunder to another, like a ship with no rudder.

“Did you bring Constance with you?” Louis queried politely as Eustace turned away from the window. Eustace shook his head, started to say that Constance had remained behind to tend to his father, whose grieving was still raw. He caught himself in time, for that would only stir up another flurry of commiserations. He’d already accepted their condolences, wanted no more. If he would rather mourn his mother in private, that was betwixt him and God and no concern of theirs.

What he really wanted to discuss with Louis was the calamitous mistake he’d made in coming to terms with Maude’s whelp. Henry Fitz Empress could not be trusted; what Angevin could? Not for nothing did men call Anjou the Devil’s birthplace. Sooner or later Louis would realize how badly he’d erred. Eustace hoped to make it sooner. But he preferred to wait for a more opportune moment. He had a better chance of convincing Louis if they were alone.

Since Eustace seemed to feel no obligation to stoke the conversational fires, it fell to the ever-courteous king to perform that task for him. It was not easy going, for so many subjects held pitfalls. Fortunately, Louis got some help from the affable Raoul, who was a past master at social discourse, the sort of talk that was lively and smooth-flowing and said nothing of any consequence. But Louis was not enjoying himself and it was a relief to be summoned away by Adam Brulart, his secretary, hovering anxiously in the doorway.

“Well, what shall we talk about now?” Raoul asked Eustace. “I can always tell you the story of my life. I daresay you’ve been awaiting that with bated breath.”

Eustace stared suspiciously at the older man, sure that Raoul was mocking him, but not sure what to do about it. Humor was the weapon he most mistrusted, for it was one he’d never learned to handle with any skill. But he was spared the need to reply. Glancing about the chamber, Raoul frowned, then rose from his seat. “Cousin? Is something amiss?”

By now other heads were turning toward Louis, too. He did look sickly, Eustace conceded, for he had no more color than a corpse candle and an odd, glazed stare, as if he were not seeing any of them. Filled with foreboding, Eustace started toward him. Raoul and Robert were already there, asking questions that Louis did not seem to hear.

It fell to Adam Brulart to tell them. After a troubled look at his king’s ashen face, the clerk said reluctantly, “The King’s Grace has just learned that the Lady Eleanor and the Duke of Normandy were wed in Poitiers on Whitsunday.”

As the unhappy clerk had known it would, his news created a furor. Voices rose as men struggled to make themselves heard. Eustace finally prevailed, for he’d had much practice in shouting others down. “Is it true?” he demanded of Louis. “Just tell me if it is true!”

Louis swallowed. “A mistake,” he said. “It must be a mistake. Eleanor would not do that to me. I know she would not…”

He was a minority of one in that belief. Several of the men had begun to curse. Raoul had paled; clutching his royal cousin’s arm, he said urgently, “I did not know, Louis. I swear by the Holy Cross that I did not know!” Louis said nothing, for he was not listening. Neither was Eustace. Turning away, he rested his palms flat against the wall, standing motionless, arms outstretched, head down. Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and now Aquitaine, too-Blood of Christ! Without warning, he balled his fist, hammered it into the wall repeatedly, leaving a smear of blood behind. In the confusion, no one noticed.

The French king continued to insist plaintively that it must be a mistake. He was Eleanor’s liege lord. She had no right to wed without his consent. And never would she have wed Henry Fitz Empress. Had she not wanted to annul their marriage because their kinship was an affront to the Almighty? It had gnawed away at her peace. She’d told him so-often. But she was even more closely akin to Henry than she was to him. So such a marriage could never be. She would not mock God’s Law like that. She would not mock him. But his protests carried less and less conviction and at last he slumped down in a chair, too stricken to keep up the pretense any further.

Gradually the other men quieted and a discomfited silence filled the chamber. Watching Louis bleed was painful for them, too, but none knew how to treat a heart wound. After much shuffling of feet and clearing of throats, they seemed to have reached an unspoken consensus that the greatest kindness they could do their king would be to leave him alone. They began to mumble regrets, to murmur vaguely of duties elsewhere, putting Eustace in mind of the hushed, unnatural voices of the mourners at his mother’s funeral. Crossing the chamber swiftly, he planted himself directly in front of his brother-in-law’s hunched figure, arms folded across his chest, legs spread, impossible to ignore.

“What mean you to do about this?”

Louis looked up blankly, a man roused from his own private hell, blinking as if surprised to find the men still here. “What can I do? They are already wed.”

“But you are not going to let them get away with it, are you? They had no right to wed and well they knew it. If it is too late to prevent the marriage, it is not too late to punish them for it. If you do not, others will think that they, too, can defy you with impunity.” Eustace’s mouth twisted and for a moment, he thought of his father. “You have no choice,” he said, “but to make an example of them, one that others will not soon forget.”

He’d struck a common chord. For once, he did not lack for allies, and they all agreed that Eleanor and Henry must be held to account for their treachery. There must be a reckoning. If Thierry Galeran was spurred on by his known hatred for Louis’s queen, that could not be said of Louis’s chancellor, and Hugh de Champfleury argued somberly, too, for retribution. When at last eyes turned toward Raoul, he did not hesitate for long. His fondness for Eleanor was genuine, but his position was precarious enough as it was. No, in this case, she was on her own. “A man does what he must,” he said carefully. “You must think of the Crown, my liege.”

Such unanimity was rare in Louis’s royal councils. He knew they were right. So great a betrayal could not be ignored. It must be avenged. She’d lied to him from the first, with her talk of conscience and God’s Will. Mayhap this had even been planned from the onset, as far back as last summer’s peace conference with the Angevins. Mayhap that was why Count Geoffrey and his spawn had become so reasonable of a sudden? That suspicion twisted the knife almost beyond bearing. How she must be laughing at him, lying in bed with the Angevin stripling, congratulating themselves for having made such an utter fool of the King of France. Well, let her beloved Aquitaine be overrun by French troops, let her watch as Poitiers burned, let her see then if she still felt like laughing.

“I shall summon them both to my court,” he said abruptly, “to answer a charge of treason.”

They approved, nodding grimly. Raoul glanced around at their faces, wondering if he was the only one who thought it unlikely that the guilty pair would obey the summons. He knew his sister-in-law better than any of them, and he could not see her submitting meekly to a judgment of the French court. Ah, Eleanor, he thought bleakly, what have you done? For such a clever lass, how had she gotten herself into such a predicament? What had possessed her to put her world at risk like this, with nothing between her and disaster but luck and a cocky nineteen-year-old?

As satisfied as Eustace was with this outcome, he still harbored a few qualms. Louis sounded steadfast enough now, but how long would that last? “What happens,” he said, “if they dare to defy the summons?”

Louis raised his head. His eyes held a blue-ice glitter that Eustace had never seen before, that he found very heartening. “Then,” Louis said, “it will be war.”