The Winter Crown (56 page)

He ushered Harry to the door and, as he opened it, he looked over his shoulder and gave Alienor a glittering look that said:
Checkmate
.

Alienor pushed aside her platter, her bread barely touched. Henry obviously knew something was afoot; he had spies everywhere who would carry tales. She thought back over what had been said the previous evening and gnawed her lip. Enough for suspicion, certainly; enough for Henry to want to bind his eldest son to his side. Perhaps he would talk Harry round. Perhaps he would offer him more baubles and allowances to fund his lavish lifestyle without addressing Harry’s true discontent. It would not be the first time.

She summoned her women so they could resume her toilet and she chose to wear the same finery as yesterday, including her jewelled hairnet and coronet, to show everyone that she was still the proud Duchess of Aquitaine.

The courtyard was packed with people mounting their horses, making their farewells, adjusting their travelling baggage. She watched Harry mount his palfrey with a set jaw and a hard expression in his eyes. He smiled though for the crowd, a fierce smile, bold as a troubadour, and tossed a profligate shower of coins into a group of watching children, as if to say that this largesse was nothing, and there was plenty more where that came from: all from his father’s coffers.

Richard watched the performance with arms folded and a cynical twist to his lips. Envy glinted in his eyes too. For two pins Alienor knew he too would be on a horse and away with the men, even though he would vehemently deny such desires. He was attracted by his father’s mantle of power and at the same time scornful; he knew he could wield that power so much more honourably and effectively.

From the corner of her eye, Alienor noticed William Marshal preparing to mount his palfrey and she went to him. William immediately removed his foot from the stirrup and bowed. ‘Madam.’

‘I do not know what is going to happen in the future, but as you value your oath, keep my son safe,’ she said, touching his mailed sleeve. ‘I am laying this task on you.’

‘Madam, I swore to serve you all my days, and I swore to serve my young lord when he became king. I shall not veer from my word, but do all in my power to protect him.’

‘Then God protect you and keep you strong because Harry will need you.’

‘I shall not fail you, madam.’ William kissed her sapphire ring. She took it off her finger and gave it to him. ‘There is sufficient worth in this to buy a spare horse or other requirements,’ she said. ‘It is for the unforeseen. Keep it close, and tell no one you have it.’

‘Madam.’ William threaded it around his neck on the same thong as his cross and tucked it down inside his shirt.

Alienor left him and went to embrace Harry. ‘Be careful,’ she said, her voice strong with warning. ‘Do nothing rash. I shall be thinking of you and holding you in my prayers.’

Harry gave her a broad smile. ‘Do not worry for me, Mama,’ he said blithely. ‘Indeed, this hunting party of Papa’s may turn out to be a fine suggestion after all.’

Alienor arched her brows and wondered just what he was hiding under that smile. All or nothing? He was becoming as difficult to read as his father.

Henry rode up on his white palfrey and reined it back hard. Its nostrils flared, showing their red lining, and bloody foam dripped from the bit. She had never seen him ride a beast that was at peace with him. ‘Have you finished with the fond farewells?’ he demanded.

She swept him an ironic curtsey because she had no fond farewells for him. ‘Indeed, sire, I have.’

‘Good. I shall send word from Chinon.’

She watched them ride out and tightened her jaw. At her side Richard said quietly, ‘What now, Mama?’

‘Now,’ she said, ‘we play a waiting game.’

Returning to her chamber, she felt sick, but elated. At least with Henry gone, she could breathe again, and she had much to do. Summoning her scribe, she dictated letters to her vassals to try and reverse the damage done by Raymond of Toulouse’s oath to Henry. Richard expended his energy by riding out on patrol with his knights as a demonstration of his ability to command and to prove that Aquitaine was in firm hands both administratively and militarily.

Isabel remained with Alienor, keeping her company but staying in the background. She showed Joanna and Belle how to work a certain floral embroidery stitch, and then she set up her braid loom so that Joanna could make a collar for her pet squirrel. Alienor watched her and frowned.

‘You did not have to stay,’ she said, taking a moment away from the letter-dictating. ‘Indeed, it might have been better if you had left.’

Isabel gave her a look of measured calm. ‘I discussed it with Hamelin last night. I said you might need company, and someone other than nursemaids to watch over John and Joanna. I can take them back to Fontevraud when I do leave if you wish, but our sons are good friends and I thought they would enjoy each other’s company for a little longer.’

‘What else did you and Hamelin discuss?’ Alienor said. ‘Did he leave you to spy on me?’ She heard the bitterness in her voice but did not draw back; it was like relieving the pressure on a suppurating wound.

‘Of course not!’ Isabel’s hazel-brown eyes widened in distress. ‘Henry surely has better spies than me if he wants to observe what you are doing.’

‘What else am I supposed to think after yesterday? If you had any sense in you, you would have left with Hamelin.’

‘I care for you,’ Isabel said. ‘And I thought I might be of use. If I had gone with Hamelin, it would only have been as far as the Touraine, and then I would have been left to myself. Indeed, Hamelin wanted me to leave, but he let me have my way in this.’

‘You should have listened to him,’ Alienor said. ‘I know Henry has me watched – and you will be under suspicion and watched too.’

Isabel smoothed her hands over her knees. ‘He thinks you are plotting to overthrow him and have your sons rule in his stead. Raymond of Toulouse came to him late last night and told him that you were. Hamelin was there and heard it all.’

Alienor was not surprised, but the words still took her aback. Expecting a blow was not the same as being struck. ‘That is exactly what I would expect of a snake – nay, a worm like Raymond of Toulouse.’ She curled her lip. ‘He would connive at anything to save himself and drive a wedge into our household, although he hardly needs to do so with Henry as he is. That explains why Henry wanted to take Harry with him. They might go hunting together, but Henry will watch his every move.’ She shook her head at Isabel. ‘I know you want everything to be right, but I cannot make it so. If Henry tries to take Aquitaine from me using underhand methods, I shall fight him with every means at my disposal until the last breath in my body. He will have to kill me to stop me.’

‘Oh, Alienor!’ Isabel held out a hand towards her in distress, her eyes liquid.

‘Save your compassion,’ Alienor snapped with a flash of temper. ‘Henry’s perfidy I can deal with, but not your doe-eyed looks of pity.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘It’s about more than that, isn’t it? You are going to tell me about the rumours of an annulment.’ She gave a bitter smile. ‘You are not the only one who knows things. The gossip has been so rife on that score I would be deaf not to have heard it.’ She rose and went to the window embrasure. ‘I wanted to come to Aquitaine, but it suited Henry too – putting me here out of the way as he saw it. If he can attach my lands to England by ties of allegiance and vassalage, then that gives him more control and diminishes my power. He can use Richard as a puppet count and retire me to a nunnery – or so he thinks.’

Isabel said quietly, ‘You will have heard rumours about a new marriage too then.’

Alienor grimaced. ‘Yes, I know about that, but Rosamund de Clifford is not of sufficient birth to be a queen, no matter her aspirations.’

‘And Alais?’

‘Oh, you have heard that one too? Hah, what a match that would be. He would become his own son’s brother-in-law and make his second son a cuckold.’ She looked over her shoulder at Isabel. ‘Knowing his weakness for young women I would not put it beyond him, but for now, that is one for the mischief-makers – and there are plenty of those. He has enough to contend with dealing with the aftermath of the murder of Becket without further incensing the Church’s sensibilities.’ She gave Isabel a tight smile, like a wounded soldier ignoring the blood. ‘Certainly I shall retire to a nunnery – when my bones are so frail that they can no longer bear my weight, when every tooth has fallen from my skull. By that time, either by mercy or retribution, I shall no longer care.’

Three weeks later, at home in Poitiers, Alienor was preparing for bed when William Marshal was ushered into her chamber. It was raining hard and he was soaked to the skin. ‘I am sorry to be dripping on your floor, madam, but the weather is foul and I have ridden hard,’ he said with chagrin, his teeth chattering.

One of her women brought a towel while another took his sodden cloak. Alienor sent a squire for bread and wine and made William sit before the hearth where a maid was stirring the embers to life. She saw him glance at her hair, which was combed down and loose ready for bed, and her lips twitched. ‘You may well look,’ she said. ‘It is given to few men to see a queen with her hair unbound.’

‘Madam, it is a memory I will treasure for the rest of my life,’ he said gallantly.

She waved her hand in a gesture that both accepted and dismissed the flattery. ‘What news of my son?’

William wiped his face with the towel. ‘He is safe in Paris, madam.’

Alienor raised her brows, not certain that she would call being in Paris ‘safe’. It certainly meant matters had escalated. ‘And how did that come about?’

‘The King and my young lord went hunting and continued to discuss their differences without resolution. My lord realised there was no further point in talking to the King, so we left Chinon secretly at night and rode for the French border. When the King found out he gave chase, but he was too late.’ William’s brow furrowed. ‘My lord asked me to knight him while we were on the road. I said it should be done by a man of greater standing, the King of France perhaps, but my lord did not wish that. He desired to be knighted so that he would be worthy to lead men … and since his father had not done so at Limoges he felt the lack…’ He sent her an apologetic look. ‘Madam, I did as he bade me and I knighted him on the road because he would have it at whatever cost.’

Alienor thought it a trifling matter when compared to the rest. ‘That is not to his detriment or yours,’ she said. ‘Go on…’

‘We reached Paris and King Louis welcomed us. He was greatly disturbed to learn that the Count of Toulouse had paid liege homage to King Henry.’

Alienor gave a cynical nod. That particular move would stick in Louis’s craw just as much as hers, if for other reasons. He had done everything in his power to bring Toulouse into his own domain. To see it veering now towards England would infuriate him.

‘He promised to support my lord, and they have set about courting allies, of which there are many.’ William gave her an uneasy look. ‘King Henry sent the Archbishop of Rouen to Paris to demand that Louis return my lord to his custody.’ William paused as food and wine arrived. Alienor waited until the servant had set them down and moved away.

‘Go on,’ she said.

‘The Archbishop came before Louis in full court and said, “The King of England asks you to return his son.” And Louis replied that he did not know what the Archbishop was saying because the King of England was sitting right beside him.’

The comment was to the point and cutting; there was satisfaction to Alienor in hearing what had been said, but no pleasure. ‘It is in Louis’s interests to foment a quarrel between father and son,’ she said. ‘His support may be strong for now, but it cannot be relied on as a rock, as I have good cause to know. What else?’ She poured wine into a cup for William and waited for him to take a few swallows. The firelight gleamed on his strong throat and the raindrops still trembling in his hair.

‘Matthew and Philip of Flanders have rallied to my lord’s side; so have the King of Scotland and the Earls of Leicester and Norfolk. England is poised to rebel and Normandy too. My lord is of no mind to conciliate.’

‘I am sorry it has come to this.’ Alienor rubbed her arms, and even standing close to the fire felt the cold invading her body. ‘Now I must choose between my obligation to my husband as his queen, and my love and loyalty to the heirs born of our union.’ And since her sons were her future, and since Henry had slighted her, that choice was obvious. ‘I trust you,’ she said to William. ‘I trust your utter loyalty to me and to my boys.’

‘Madam, I swore my oath to you and to my young lord,’ William said stoutly. ‘I am troubled by the divisions, but I hold to my word.’ He left the bench and fell to his knees. ‘I swear it again to you. I shall protect my lord with my life, and serve unto death.’

Alienor took his hands between hers, still cold from the rain, and gave him the kiss of peace. ‘Let us hope it does not come to that,’ she said, ‘but I accept your service, and you shall be rewarded for it, I promise.’

William resumed his seat. ‘Madam, there is more. My lord wishes the lords Richard and Geoffrey to join him in France. That is the reason he has sent me to Poitiers – to bring them to safety – and yourself if that is your wish.’

Alienor dug her fingernails into her palms. So, Harry wanted to be head of the family and Louis wanted all the young fledglings to roost with him – although not, she suspected, herself. It would come as a nasty surprise if she did turn up with her sons. The scenario of Richard and Geoffrey going to France was one she had wrestled with, feeling as if she was trapped in a box with the lid coming down.

‘They are not yet men,’ she said, ‘even if they believe they are. They are susceptible to the manipulations of others. Harry might think he is taking control by rebelling against his father, but Henry has the Devil’s luck, and I know what a fierce fighter and organiser he is. Harry and Louis don’t have those skills. Richard will come to them in time but he is only fifteen years old, and Geoffrey even younger.’