“You look like a bloody nun,” Henry exclaimed when he saw her. “Why the weeds?”
“How perceptive you are!” she retorted. “I am mourning the loss of my people’s love.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” he scoffed.
“After yesterday’s display, you are in no position to talk,” Eleanor snapped, adjusting her veil. “Well, I am ready,” she added quickly, seeing him framing a biting reply. “I suppose you are still insisting on this cruel, harsh order being carried out?”
“Come!” was all Henry said.
They emerged from their tent to a maelstrom of activity. Scaffolding was being erected, tools commandeered, and surly, glowering men—long lines of them—were being impressed to do the demolition work. Even the master masons, loudly protesting, had been given no choice. Women, and even children, were scurrying to and fro with huge baskets, or carrying messages conveying orders, while great carts stood ready to carry away the rubble. The atmosphere was subdued, the resentment of the people palpable. When Henry appeared, there were muffled curses.
He leaped up onto a large boulder and signaled to his men-at-arms to sound the alarum. The activity ceased, and hundreds of pairs of angry eyes turned to the stocky figure of the duke. Eleanor, standing miserably behind him, almost shaking with resentment, could see burning hatred in those eyes—and a desire for revenge.
“People of Limoges!” Henry cried in ringing tones. “I hope you will not forget this day, and I hope you will learn from it. When Madame the Duchess and I next visit you, I trust you will treat us with greater courtesy. And maybe you might like to rebuild these inconvenient walls so as to allow better access to your kitchens!”
There was a sullen silence. Then someone in the crowd threw a stone. It missed, but Henry was not in a forgiving mood.
“If I catch the varlet who did that, I’ll have him castrated,” he threatened. “And anyone else who thinks they can mock my justice. Now, back to work, all of you.” He jumped off the boulder and strode over to Eleanor, then grasping her purposefully by the hand, led her along the perimeter of the plateau on which the old city was built, following the line of the doomed walls. Behind them tramped his armed escort. The citizens saw them coming as they bent furiously to their task, not daring to slacken, for Henry’s anger was still writ plain upon his face. Finally, he and Eleanor arrived at a vantage point at a safe distance from the demolition work and stood there to watch, as citizens who had lavished good money and pride, not to mention the sweat of their backs and the blood of their willing fingers, building their defenses, grudgingly pulled them apart, stone by stone. As the walls of Limoges began crashing to the ground in clouds of yellow dust, Eleanor felt the destruction like a physical pain. Yet her face remained impassive, for Henry was watching her, as if daring her to protest; but she would not allow him that satisfaction.
After Henry finally let her return to their pavilion, when the choking dust became too much to bear, she just wanted to flee as far from Limoges as possible, or crawl into a hole like a badger, for she keenly felt her citizens’ grief and anger, and the conviction that, in failing to save their walls, she had betrayed them. She burned with fury against Henry, and even more so when they met for dinner later and he made no reference to the events of the day and was his usual genial self. In bed he was once again the ardent lover, by turns demanding and tender, and Eleanor almost managed to persuade herself that all was well, but found it hard to respond because she was deeply preoccupied with concern about what her people now thought of her.
She could not stop brooding. It seemed to her that this marriage that she had defied the world to make had become, in its own way, as much a form of captivity as her union with Louis had been in another. This was not the partnership she had planned for, but a vile endurance, she told herself angrily. She had been duped, no doubt of it. Henry’s passion had driven her sense of power, but now she saw that it had all been an illusion. Yes, they’d had mutual aims, and he had been happy to consult and defer to her, but only when it suited him. The reality was, he had the mastery of her, by all the laws of God and man—and was determined to assert it, even if it meant riding roughshod over her feelings and sensibilities. She seethed at her own helplessness, chafing against the invisible chains that bound her.
There were, of course, no cheers as they rode away from the destruction that was now Limoges, but the rest of the progress passed without incident, and Henry cheered up considerably when the people of Gascony showed themselves more than willing to be recruited for his English offensive, and ready to provide him with ships and supplies. He put it down to word of his strong and uncompromising rule going before him. In the future, these godforsaken southerners would think twice about defying him! Small wonder they were groveling.
At last they came to the Talmont, that pretty village nestling above the Gironde estuary on a promontory of high white cliffs. Here, Eleanor’s family had built a hunting lodge, a place much beloved by her. Yet even here her subjects’ antipathy toward Henry was palpable. She cringed when, on the first day they arrived at the mews, her falconers took no pains to hide their dislike, and kept Henry waiting an unconscionable time in his saddle for a bird; and when it was brought to him, he was not pleased to find that it was a lowly sparrowhawk—a bird deemed suitable only for priests or women—instead of the royal gyrfalcon he had been expecting, and which was his right. She, on the other hand, had a most noble hawk perching on her glove. It had been horribly embarrassing, because for all the servile excuses that no suitable falcon was available, quite clearly the slight had been deliberate.
She said nothing. Secretly, she was gratified to see Henry so discomfited. Let him reap what he had sown!
On the surface, however, they were existing in a tacit state of truce. The weather was still good, despite the lateness of the year, and they rode out hawking daily, admired the spectacular views from the cliffs, went to mass in the squat stone church of St. Radegonde, and enjoyed each other’s bodies every night. And gradually, unwillingly, Eleanor found herself succumbing again to her husband’s charm and dynamism.
“I could live here quite happily,” Henry said, stretching, as they lay abed one sunny morning.
“It is beautiful in summer,” she told him, her tone still a little clipped and formal, for resentment was yet festering in her. “There are hollyhocks everywhere.”
“Then we will come back next year,” he promised. His eyes sought hers.
“You are still angry with me about Limoges,” he said.
“You had your way. There is nothing more to say.” Eleanor shrugged, her eyes veiled.
“But you are holding aloof from me,” Henry complained. “I fuck you every night, and in the mornings too, but I can’t reach you.”
“What did you expect?” she asked. “You have no cause to find fault with me. I played the part of submissive wife to perfection, at the risk of alienating my subjects. I allow you the use of my body whenever you want it. I am with you in bed and at board. Many couples rub along with less.”
“But we had so much more!” Henry flared.
“We did,”Eleanor agreed vehemently. “It was you who decided to play the aggressive husband, you who set at naught my hopes for a partnership of equals. I am a captive in this marriage!”
“So I’m being punished,” he retorted.
“No, that is how things are now.” Eleanor made to rise from the bed, but Henry caught her wrist.
“I love you, you know,” he said urgently.
Tears welled in her eyes.
“I love you,”he said again, staring at her.
Slowly, she came into his arms, her body racked with uncontrollable sobs, and clung to him.