‘I am here in his castle. He has hinted and I have seen some purpose in his eyes. I think I should take these precautions.’
How right she was. As she expected the young Count attempted to come to her bedchamber. Her trusted esquire who lay across her door sprang to his feet, his sword unsheathed. When commanded to stand aside he said that he acted on the orders of the Queen and any who crossed the threshold would do so only over his dead body.
‘A fuss about nothing,’ grumbled the Count and went fuming back to his bed.
How Eleonore laughed in the morning when she heard the account of this.
She decided that she would not spend another night in the castle of Blois and secretly ordered that preparations be made to leave.
Theobald came to her. He was very suave. He begged her to stay another night for he had heard that there was a band of robbers in the neighbourhood, and by the next day he could get together an escort to accompany her and her party.
A twinge of alarm came to Eleonore then. She knew what means ambitious young men adopted with heiresses. He could make her a prisoner in his castle, force her to submit to his attentions and keep her there until she agreed to marry him. She had no doubt that plans along this line were formulating in the Count’s mind.
She was not really afraid and half amused. How dared he! He had been in possession of his estates only two years and he was behaving like a brigand.
She would teach him a lesson.
She pretended to believe him.
There was more feasting that night, more songs were sung. She noticed how he endeavoured to fill her goblet. Did he think she was an innocent? It was she who contrived to make him drink as much as to fuddle his mind. She knew that he spoke truth when he said he was sending for guards. They would not be to conduct her on her way but to guard her in the castle.
She had planned what she would do. She had ordered that every member of her party be prepared to leave that night in secret. As soon as the castle was quiet they would creep down to the stables where everything would be in readiness. They would slip away and when the Count awoke in the morning he would find his guests had gone.
She was an intrigant by nature.
She amused herself by giving a little encouragement to the Count, implying that she might consider him, providing he behaved in a manner which she considered due to her dignity. She would be hurried into nothing and an attempt to effect this would meet with her disapproval.
She managed to instil into his somewhat fuddled mind that he must give her time and that she would be rather amused by his methods to coerce her.
Thus he decided to leave her in peace for that night and her plans were successful. Very quietly she and her party left Blois, and in the morning when the ambitious young Count awoke he cursed himself and all who served him because they had allowed this prize to slip between his fingers.
How she laughed as she looked back at the far distant castle of Blois in the early morning light. If he sent the fleetest riders after her he would never catch her now.
‘We will make for Anjou,’ she said. ‘There we shall be safe for that is the Count of Anjou’s land, and the Count of Anjou is the Duke of Normandy and were I to fall into his hands it would be with the greatest of pleasure for he is the man I am going to marry.’
So they made for Anjou and as they crossed into it she was exultant.
Her complacency was short-lived. As they crossed the meadows they saw a rider in the distance, a young man who begged to speak to the Queen.
He told her he had been in the employ of Henry Plantagenet, now Duke of Normandy, and had been passed into the service of Henry’s young brother, Geoffrey Plantagenet.
‘My lady,’ he said, ‘I still serve the Duke of Normandy and so I come to tell you that four miles ahead lies an ambush. Geoffrey Plantagenet plans to abduct you, to take you to his castle, and to keep you there until you promise to marry him. He hates his brother because he has inherited much while he has but three castles in Anjou.’
Eleonore laughed aloud.
‘Take this young man,’ she said, ‘give him food and from henceforth he shall serve me. I promise you, my good fellow, that ere long you shall find yourself in the service of the Duke of Normandy for any who serves me will serve him also. We will now change course. We will leave Anjou and go south to Aquitaine. We will ride to Poitiers and I promise you it will not be long before we have reached my city.’
Warily they rode. There had been two indications of what ambitious men would attempt to win the hand of an heiress.
‘None shall take by force what is mine to give,’ said Eleonore.
They came to her city of Poitiers and she took up her lodging in the chateau; there she sent a messenger to Henry to tell him that she would await him there and when he came they would be married without delay.
How long the waiting seemed and yet she knew he came with all speed! It was necessary for them to marry quickly and that no hint of who her bridegroom was to be should reach Louis’s ears. As Duchess of Aquitaine she was his vassal and he had the right to forbid her to marry a man of whom he did not approve, and it would not be only Louis who disapproved of a match between Normandy and Aquitaine.
At length he came. She was in the courtyard waiting to greet him. With great joy they embraced and eagerly discussed the arrangements for the wedding which must take place without delay. They would not wait for the ceremony of course, although each realised the importance of it. They had been lovers before and were impatient for each other.
The wedding was to take place on Whit Sunday and it would not be celebrated with the pomp which had accompanied that of Eleonore to the King of France for it was most important for it to take place before anyone could stop it.
However spies had already conveyed to Louis that Henry of Normandy had joined Eleonore in Poitiers and that arrangements were going on to celebrate their marriage.
Louis was furious. Not only was he jealous of Eleonore’s obsession with young Henry, but if Aquitaine and Normandy were joined by the marriage of these two, then Henry of Normandy would be the most powerful man in the country.
He demanded that his vassal, Henry of Normandy, come to Paris immediately.
That was a summons which Henry could only ignore. Instead of obeying the King he went to the cathedral with Eleonore and there, on that warm Whit Sunday, Eleonore of Aquitaine became the bride of Henry of Normandy.
Chapter V
QUEEN OF ENGLAND
Rarely had Louis’s passions been so strongly aroused as when he heard of the marriage of Eleonore and Henry. In the first place he could not endure to think of her with that young virile man. Henry of Normandy was uncouth; he might be learned, but he was rough in manners and Eleonore had always been so fastidious. What was the attraction? He knew. It was that overwhelming sensuality in her which had both fascinated and yet appalled him.
There was more to it than mere jealousy. There was the political implication.
Henry of Normandy had now become the most powerful man in France. Apart from Normandy he would now be in control of Aquitaine, Maine and Anjou; which meant that he possessed more land than anyone in France, not excluding the King.
Louis’s ministers deplored the divorce and its consequences. They implied that they had told him so and he should never have agreed to let Eleonore go. Only a few weeks after the separation and she had changed the face of France, geographically and politically! Henry had a touch of his great-grandfather in him which was recognised by many. He was undoubtedly a chip off the old conquering block. It was as though William the Conqueror was reborn.