Alienor grimaced and Mathilde responded with a humourless smile. ‘Forewarned is forearmed. You have the strength to deal with what is given to you.’
That was hardly a comfort, Alienor thought. ‘It is too late tonight to set out for Poitiers,’ she said. ‘A few hours more will make no difference.’ At least he had not yet sailed for England, and had troops in readiness.
That night she dreamed of dark crimson roses dripping with blood and in the morning awoke to discover that her flux had begun and Henry’s seed had not taken root. She had not really expected it to for the sake of one night, but still, it heightened her anxiety. Before she took leave of Fontevraud, she prayed again in the church and knelt to Mathilde to receive her blessing. And then, with Emma at her side, she joined the rest of her entourage and rode south towards the safety of Aquitaine.
Alienor had spent the morning occupied with the business of government. The hall and courtyard in Poitiers was in a state of constant activity with the comings and goings of messengers, petitioners, scribes and servants. She had heard from Henry in the field. He had chosen not to take on his enemies in direct combat, but had attacked them in vulnerable areas they were not expecting and with such speed that he left them baffled and reeling. She had ensured her own borders were secure because Henry’s rebellious brother Geoffrey controlled several castles too close to Poitou for comfort.
She gazed at the new silver seal sitting by her right hand. She had commissioned it immediately after her marriage and the legend round the rim declared her Alienor, Countess of Poitou, Duchess of the Normans and Countess of the Angevins. This was hers, this was her power and she was never going to give it up to usurpers. Every document that went out from her court bore that authority, and it gave her deep feelings of pride and satisfaction.
Deciding to clear her head before the dinner hour, she called for her horse to be saddled. It was a fine late summer day and her palfrey was eager to trot. Alienor gave the horse its head and as the trot became a canter and then a gallop, she relaxed into the speed, enjoying the sensation of freedom and the illusion of outrunning her cares. Some of her courtiers considered her reckless but that was not what her race against the wind was about. She well knew the difference between being reckless and taking a calculated risk.
Eventually Alienor slowed the gelding to a walk and patted his sweating neck. They had reached the lichened Roman soldier, who looked little different from that time fifteen years ago when she had ridden out with Archbishop Gofrid and he had told her she was to marry Louis of France. The wide, white stare remained the same, although perhaps his cladding of lichen had spread a little. She gave him a wry smile of acknowledgement. He would be here long after she was dust.
Looking up, she became aware of a horseman cantering towards her in a cloud of pale dust. A handful of men rode behind him, but he had outstripped them by a hundred yards. Alienor’s escort put hands to their weapons, but she gestured them to stand down. ‘It is my lord husband,’ she said. Suddenly her heart was pounding. What was his urgency? Had there been a disaster? Was he fleeing and preparing to defend Poitiers?
Henry slewed to a halt before her. His black courser was blowing hard, the linings of its nostrils as red as expensive cloth. Sweat dripped from its hide, and from Henry too. He was scarlet in the face and his eyes shone like grey crystals, fierce and bright.
‘Lady wife.’ He swept her a bow in the saddle. ‘I left you in haste, and in haste I return.’ His smile dazzled. His beard was fuller than at their marriage, and his hair needed cutting. Alienor was overjoyed to see him, and delighted too that he wore a smile, but she was still anxious.
‘I am glad to see you whole and unharmed,’ she replied, ‘and I am flattered by your haste, but where are the rest of your men?’
‘Following. I outrode them,’ he said cheerfully.
‘For any reason?’
‘Only that they were too slow and I was most eager to greet you.’ He gave her a plaintive look. ‘And now I am very thirsty and I need to wash and change and eat and drink.’
‘All at once?’ Alienor gave him a teasing look.
‘Why waste time?’ he said.
Alienor turned her palfrey and they trotted back to the city together with their entourages falling in behind. ‘I take it you do not bring bad news?’
‘Well, not for us,’ Henry said with a gleam, ‘but Louis has turned tail to Paris claiming a recurrence of his fever and the brothers of Blois have retreated with him.’ A triumphant note entered his voice. ‘I told you that speed counted for more than courage and numbers.’
As they rode, Alienor learned that Louis had tried to take Pacy, but Henry had ridden hard through the night, foundering horses but reaching strategic areas almost two days before he was expected. He had drawn them off by burning the Vexin, seizing Bonmoulins and harrying the land like a demon. ‘They could not stand my pace and fury,’ he said with a smug and savage grin. ‘They were expecting a rash boy who had overstepped his mark, but they got me instead.’
Alienor gave the servants orders concerning Henry’s men and had a bathtub prepared for her young husband in the private chamber at the top of the Maubergeonne Tower. An attendant placed fresh bread and chicken on a board set across the bathtub so that Henry could eat and soak at the same time.
‘What of your brother?’
‘Geoffrey?’ Henry made a face. ‘He’s always wanted what is mine and will do anything to get it, even conniving with the French. Much good it has done him, the fool. He shut his castles against me so I took them from him. He has no idea how to keep men loyal and has neither the wit nor the talent for warfare. I besieged him at Montsorreau – if you can call it a siege; he didn’t stand. He does not have a backbone either.’
‘What have you done with him?’
‘Accepted his submission for now and put my men in charge of his castles. I have sent him to my mother in Rouen. I would have kept him with me but I do not want to spoil my time here with the sight of his sulky face.’ He paused to drink some wine and bite into the bread and chicken.
‘Your aunt Mathilde said there was no love lost between you.’
‘Hah, she’s right. Geoffrey’s always been a brat and resented me.’
‘And your other brother?’
‘Will?’ Henry swallowed. ‘He’s a brat too. He was always whining and telling tales when he was a child – still has that inclination now, but he’s no threat. He will be happy to take whatever Geoffrey drops through stupidity. Like Hamelin he has his uses.’
Chewing another mouthful he began to wash. The bathwater had changed colour from clear to milky grey. The sight of his wet, dark copper hair curling on his nape against his pale skin filled her with tenderness and a spark of lust. ‘And what do your brothers think of you?’
He gave a snort of amusement. ‘Hamelin would like to see me fall from a personal point of view, but he also considers I have the most to offer him and that it’s better to be faithful and not bite the hand that feeds. He likes Geoffrey and William even less, and they have only scraps to offer. Geoffrey wants me dead and that’s the end of the matter. If I had not promised my father on my soul I would not harm him, the feeling would be mutual. William is still becoming his own man. He won’t run with Geoffrey for the same reasons as Hamelin – it’s not a safe bet, so he regards me as the devil he knows.’
She pursed her lips. ‘So brotherly love is no part of the mix?’
‘God no!’
Alienor took the dining board away and Henry stood up. Attendants sluiced him down with jugs of warm water and he stepped from the bath on to a fleece rug where attendants towelled him dry and dressed him in clean, soft garments.
‘I learned long ago’, he said, ‘that to get the best from anything you have to be entirely familiar with its workings, be it a water mill, a ship, a horse or a man.’
Alienor gave him a teasing look. ‘And what about me?’
Henry lifted one eyebrow. ‘I am going to enjoy finding out.’
Alienor dismissed the servants with a peremptory gesture and sat on the bed. ‘That will take you a lifetime. Water mills, ships, horses and men – they are simple to understand and deal with, but you will find me more of a challenge.’
‘Ah, so you think men simple to deal with?’
The atmosphere was charged with erotic tension. Alienor stroked her throat, drew her hand down over her braids, and halted at her waist, with her fingers pointing downwards. ‘Men are governed by their appetites,’ she said.
‘As are women,’ he retorted. ‘Indeed the Church teaches us that women are insatiable.’
‘The Church is governed by men, who have their own appetite for control, do you believe everything the Church tells you?’
Laughing, he joined her. ‘I am not gullible.’ He unpinned her veil and unwound her hair, running his fingers through the strands and breathing in their scent. ‘So, if I am governed by my appetites, and you are insatiable, perhaps we shall never leave this chamber.’
She laughed in return. ‘My grandfather wrote a poem about that very thing.’
‘About two women, their ginger tom cat and a travelling knight?’
‘You know it?’
‘Hah, I have heard it recited round more campfires than I can remember. One hundred and ninety-nine times over the course of eight days, was it not?’ He unfastened the brooch pinning the neck of her dress. ‘Your grandfather was prey to poetic exaggeration, I suspect. I am not about to die trying to emulate his imagination. I always say that quality is better than quantity!’
Alienor leaned over Henry. His chest was still heaving from their most recent bout of lovemaking and there was a beatific smile on his face. ‘Well, sire,’ she said, ‘it seems to me you are indeed trying to match the record in my grandfather’s poem.’
Henry chuckled. ‘No one could blame me if I did. Is there any wine? I’m parched.’
Alienor left the bed and went to see to his request. Henry sat up, dried himself with his shirt and took the cup she gave him.
‘Why are you smiling?’ he asked after he had drunk.
‘I was thinking that last time we shared a bed, you could not wait to be out of it and away.’
Henry grinned. ‘That was because it was morning and I had things to do. I did not need the sleep, and both duty and pleasure had been successfully accomplished.’ He sobered. ‘Do not expect me to keep regular hours.’
‘I don’t, but I should know how long you are staying for this time. Do not tell me you have to rush off to Barfleur again?’
Henry shook his head. ‘I have decided to wait until after Christmas. I have plenty to occupy me here.’ He gave her a playful look. ‘I know little of Aquitaine and Poitou save that they are lands of vast resources and changing landscapes. I want to see them; I want to know about them – and about you and your vassals. And you have never been to Normandy. In turn you must familiarise yourself … and meet my mother.’
Alienor’s heart sank at the notion of meeting the formidable Empress Matilda. She intended to find out everything she could about her in order to be prepared. She had learned how to deal with Henry’s father, but a woman of the experience and temperament of the Empress Matilda was another matter entirely. She still bore the scars of her clashes with Louis’s mother, who had made her position as a new wife very difficult. How much of a mother’s son was Henry? ‘Indeed,’ she said guardedly.
‘And to beget heirs, we must be together. I desire sons and daughters of you, as you must desire them of me.’
‘We are certainly doing our best to succeed,’ she said with a smile, but she was thoughtful. She would have to guard against him becoming too familiar with her people even while he would be her sword should she need to curb them.
Henry drank his wine, kissed her once again, and left the bed to dress.
‘Your sister is proving a great help among my women,’ she remarked. ‘She is skilled with a needle as you said she would be, and I enjoy her company.’
‘Good.’ Henry nodded. ‘My father wanted me to do well by her, and she can be put to better use than sewing altar cloths in Fontevraud.’
Alienor eyed him. ‘I would have thought you might have more tender sentiments for an only sister,’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘We sometimes played together as children and she was always at my father’s court for the great feasts of the year, but mostly we lived different lives. She is kin and I acknowledge my duty to her. Doubtless we shall become better acquainted now she is attending on you.’ He raised his glance to her. ‘What of your own sister? She is young enough to leave the cloister and remarry. Do you not wish to accommodate her among your women?’
Alienor shook her head. ‘I do not think that would be wise,’ she said, a pang arrowing through her at the thought of Petronella.
He gave her a questioning look.
‘She is …’ She hesitated. The earlier scandal concerning her sister’s marriage was common knowledge, but Petronella’s fragility of mind was less well known outside the French court and Henry did not have to be told. ‘She is best left in the cloister for now,’ she said. ‘Life at court would be difficult for her. She does not wish to take another husband, and I shall not force her.’
Henry shrugged. ‘As you wish,’ he said, plainly considering the matter of small consequence amidst his own plans. He sat down before the fire and began reading from a pile of correspondence on the trestle. ‘Where to first? Talmont?’ A spark lit in his eyes. ‘I very much want to do some hunting.’
Alienor managed to smile even though her sadness for her sister was a lingering emotion. ‘So do I,’ she said and, donning her chemise, joined him at the trestle.
Bleak but intense winter light fingered through the high windows of the abbey of Bec. The air was cold and pure, almost icy. Gold and gems sparkled on crosses and the choir sang a Te Deum as Alienor knelt at the foot of the steps leading to the dais that had been set up in the nave. Above her on a cushioned marble chair sat Henry’s mother, the Empress Matilda. The gown beneath her ermine-lined cloak glittered with dark jewels, and a gold diadem that would not have looked out of place at the palace of Constantinople shone on her brow. It almost seemed to Alienor as if the jewels were wearing the woman. The Empress’s face was lined with the years of strife she had endured in her fight for her heritage, but her bones were hard and strong, and her expression imperious. Having greeted Henry, she directed him to a chair on her right.