Eleanor was filled with a sudden sense of foreboding, as if this might be her last chance to make things right with Henry—or as right as they could ever be now. “I forgive you, truly I do,” she said, meaning it wholeheartedly.
“My lady,” he answered in a choked voice, and, bowing his head, raised her hand to his lips and kissed it again. The thought came unbidden to her that here they were, two people who had once worshipped each other passionately with their bodies, now reduced to the chaste contact of hands and lips. It was an unbearably poignant moment. What was it about this man, she asked herself, that tied her to him against all reason, when he had done so much to destroy the love she had cherished for him, and she had tried again and again to liberate herself from her thralldom?
Henry recovered himself first, raising sick gray eyes to her. “I will free you as soon as I can,” he said gruffly. “All that remains now is for me to resolve my differences with Philip, by force, if necessary,” he said, swallowing.
Eleanor looked at him fearfully. Having established this new, forgiving rapport with him, with the dawning hope of perhaps a happier reconciliation to come, she could not bear the thought of anything evil befalling him. “You are in no fit state to go to war!” she told him. “Have you looked at yourself in a mirror recently? Henry, what exactly is wrong with you? I know you are not well. Tell me!”
“It’s nothing. A trifle.” He shrugged.
“I’m not blind,” she persisted. “You are in pain.”
Henry sighed. “I have a tear in my back passage,” he admitted. “It bleeds all the time, and festers, as I cannot keep it clean.”
“Then you should not be riding a horse, still less going on long marches,” Eleanor reproved. “Can the doctors do nothing for you?”
“No, they’re useless,” he said, frowning. “I’m sorry, Eleanor, but I have to settle matters with Philip. Then I can rest and give myself time to get better. Don’t look at me like that! I’ll be all right!”
“Then may I at least give you one piece of advice, Henry?” she asked gently. “If you would keep Richard on your side, let him marry Alys without any further delays.”
Henry frowned. “I cannot,” he said at length.
“Why?” she persisted. “Is it because she is your leman?”
He looked like a trapped animal, furtive and wanting to bolt. “You know?” he asked incredulously.
“I have known for some time. Alys told me. I noticed that she was pregnant.” Eleanor paused.
“You knew, and you never said anything?”
“What was there to say, beyond warning you of your great folly and the magnitude of your sin, but I doubt you would have heeded me, of all people.” Her eyes, clear with sincerity, met his. “Henry, we were finished. The days when I lay with you wondering if another woman had enjoyed your body were long gone. I was shocked, yes, but mainly for Richard’s sake—and that silly girl’s. Alys did not come between us.”
“Richard knows,” Henry said.
“The whole world will have to know, if he marries her,” Eleanor warned. “Their union will be incestuous without a dispensation.”
“As ours was,” Henry reminded her. “You had known myfather. I often ask myself if we were cursed as a result. What else could explain all the evils that have befallen us and our issue?”
“The fact that you are descended from the Devil might have something to do with it!” Eleanor smiled. “But Henry, not everything has been touched with evil. Look at the great empire that our marriage created!”
“That too, Eleanor,” Henry said, shaking his head. “It’s been well nigh impossible holding it together; I have worn myself out trying to do so. It has caused nothing but strife and jealousies, and it will go on doing so, mark my words, maybe for hundreds of years even. Any fool should have seen that trying to unite such large domains would bring unique problems of its own, even without a cat like Philip waiting to pounce.”
He looked at the hourglass. “I must go, if I’m to get to Southampton by nightfall.”
“God go with you then, my lord,” Eleanor prayed, knowing that further protests about his health would fall on deaf ears.
“And with you, my lady,” Henry said briskly, and, planting a brief kiss on her lips this time, was gone.
Winchester, 1188–1189
At first the reports that filtered through to England were encouraging. The King was winning—a great victory over the French was almost a certainty! And hot on the heels of that news came Henry’s order for Eleanor to move to the greater comfort of Winchester; yet no sooner had she gratefully settled into her lodgings there, with Henry Berneval fussing about to make sure she had everything she needed, as the King had commanded him, there came the news she had dreaded to hear. Richard had succumbed to Philip’s blandishments and deserted his father.
She wept, she raged at her son’s perfidy. But then she learned of the peace conference at Bonmoulins, where Richard, backed by the French king, had demanded that Henry name him as his heir, give him Anjou and Maine now, and let him marry Alys forthwith, without further prevarication. All reasonable requests, of course, and naturally it made sense for Richard to shoulder the burden of governing some of Henry’s domains, given the King’s state of health. But the stumbling block was, and always would be, Alys.
When Henry had refused, Richard defiantly knelt before Philip and did homage to him for Anjou and Maine; and the French, incensed at the old King’s obstinacy, attacked him and his men and drove them away from the negotiations, against all the laws of chivalry and diplomacy.
Eleanor wept again, this time for Henry’s shame and ignominy, picturing him being forced to take refuge in some crumbling, godforsaken castle, which was what appeared to have happened. Fortunately, the winter rains had set in, drawing the campaigning season to a close, and a truce had been agreed upon until Easter. Henry wrote to say that he was at Le Mans and in good health, but Ranulf Glanville, who was with him, wrote Eleanor privately to warn her that his master was ill and in low spirits.
Concerned, she wrote to Henry, pleading to be allowed to join him for Christmas, but he refused, saying that he was not planning any great festival. That was unusual in itself, for Henry had always observed the major feasts of the Church with all due ceremony and revelry, and she perceived by his answer that he was indeed unwell. She considered going to him unbidden, but that would mean evading the vigilance of the conscientious Henry Berneval and finding sufficient money and means for her journey in the depths of winter, which might prove a virtual impossibility. No, all she could do was pray for Henry’s recovery. So she spent hours on her knees before the statue of the Virgin in the castle chapel, almost bullying the Holy Mother into interceding for the King; and, for a few quiet weeks, it seemed that her prayers had been heeded.
Easter came, and with it news of another peace conference. Clearly the princes did not want all-out war if they could help it. Eleanor was on her knees again, praying for a peaceful settlement, when another letter from Ranulf Glanville was brought to her, in which she read, to her dismay, that the conference had to be postponed because the King was too ill to attend. After that, it was back to hectoring the Virgin Mary, often with tears and bribes of masses and manifold good deeds.
June, and the King was better. Eleanor’s heart rejoiced when she heard that he had met with Philip and Richard, but it plummeted again when she was told that Henry had persisted in his determination to marry Alys to John, and that Richard, maintaining that this was the first step in a sinister plot to disinherit him, threw in his lot with Philip and declared war on his father.