‘He’s an insolent fellow. If you receive him he will preach to you. He will tell you to give up your crown.’
‘I will tell him to be gone.’
‘Better to tell him not to come. My lord King, if you will allow me to express an opinion, for the sake of the dignity of your crown you cannot receive a man whose aim is to snatch it from you.’
‘Indeed I cannot.’
‘Then you should have him warned that you will not receive him.’
‘I will,’ declared Henry, and had done so, but almost immediately he regretted it. It seemed so churlish to turn his old teacher away.
But Roger of York was right. Now that he was King he could suffer no indignity.
He let his mind dwell on the glory of the coronation when the crown had been placed on his head in the solemn ceremony and later at the banquet his father the King had served him.
Men looked on amazed at such a sight. The idea of a king – and such a king – bowing to his own young son was incongruous.
One of them had said to him afterwards: ‘What a sight it was. The King himself to kneel to you!’
‘Why should not the son of a count kneel to the son of a king,’ retorted Henry; and the remark was repeated for it was indeed true that young Henry was the son of the King of England and the King of England was only the son of the Count of Anjou.
Ever since, he had been deeply aware of his title, and with each day his resentment grew.
Six months a king and still treated like a child! It would not do. He would speak to his father. So he said now. It would be a different matter when he stood before him. Then he would be afraid as all men were, be they prince or serf, that the dangerous colour would flame into the face and the whites of the eyes redden and the terrible temper rise up like a roaring lion ready to destroy all those who crossed him.
‘One of these days when your father is in one of his rages it will be the end of him.’ That was his mother’s voice, quiet, mocking, putting thoughts into his head which would not otherwise have been there.
Messengers at the castle. They always excited him. What news were they bringing? A message from his father? Was he to join him in Normandy or wherever he was? Was he to place himself at the head of a troop of soldiers? Was he going to be given land and castles of his own at last?
‘My lord,’ said one of his knights, ‘there is a messenger from Canterbury.’
‘From Canterbury, but my father is across the sea.’
‘He comes not from your father, my lord.’
‘From Canterbury! From the Archbishop! But I will not see the Archbishop. I have said I will not receive those who do not please me.’
‘My lord, he has doleful tidings.’
‘Then bring him to me.’
The messenger came. He bowed low. ‘My lord, this day I bring you sad tidings. The Archbishop of Canterbury has been murdered in his Cathedral.’
‘Murdered!’ cried Henry. ‘How so?’
‘Four of your father’s knights have killed him.’
‘Killed him … in the Cathedral!’ The boy’s eyes were misty. It could not be so. And yet he might have guessed it. Thomas had quarrelled with his father and the King allowed none to do that with impunity.
‘Tell me in detail,’ he commanded; and the story was told.
Henry went to his bedchamber. He could not shut out the terrible sight those men had conjured up. Thomas à Becket lying on the stones of the Cathedral in a pool of blood.
‘I refused to see him,’ he said to himself, ‘but I did not wish this to happen. Oh, God, how thankful I am that I had no part in it.’
Then he thought of the old days when Thomas had taken him into his household and given special attention to the son of the King. The Archbishop had told him stories of his father, how they had been great friends and roamed the countryside together before he had become Archbishop and was merely the King’s Chancellor. Pleasant merry stories, showing the King in a different guise. It was clear from the manner in which Thomas had talked of Henry that he had loved him. He had been as much aware of Thomas’s love as he had of his mother’s hatred. And yet his father had murdered Thomas.
Oh yes he had. Young Henry knew that everyone was thinking it even if they dared not say it. Four knights had struck the blows but the whole world would know on whose instructions.
‘It will be remembered against him,’ he mused. ‘The people will turn from him because of it. And to whom will they turn? Surely to the one whom he himself had crowned their King.’
Eleanor Queen of England was content to be in her beloved city of Poitiers. This was the land she loved; the land of mild breezes, warm sun and song. It was here that the Courts of Love belonged; it had been impossible to transplant them in the colder climate of England with a people who had little patience with the laws of chivalry and dreams of ideal love. The king of that country was typical of the people he ruled, thought Eleanor scornfully – lusty, unimaginative, seeing something decadent in lying in the sun and making beautiful verses in honour of lovers.
This was where she belonged and she never wanted to see England again. She might tell herself that she never wanted to see Henry also, but that was not true. He stimulated her as no one else could; he probed her emotions to their depth; she could never be truthfully aloof from him. Once she had loved him fiercely and now as fiercely she hated him.
Often in her gardens she would be thinking of Henry when handsome troubadours strummed on their lutes and gazed at her with love and longing which must be feigned, for she was nearly fifty years of age and although she had been an exceptionally beautiful woman and still was, she had lived her life adventurously and time had left its mark on her. She remembered those early days when they had loved passionately and she had divorced Louis King of France in order to marry him. He had been as eager for the match as she was, but that may have been because she could bring him Aquitaine and he was a glutton for land. Sometimes she thought that he dreamed of conquering the whole world. Still if Aquitaine had been the main attraction he had hidden the fact and those early years of their marriage must have brought some of the satisfaction to him that they had brought to her. The strong physical attraction had been there – there was no doubt of it; but he, the lusty King, who all his life had taken what he wanted when he wanted it, had soon been unfaithful. She could laugh now at her fury when she had discovered it through the little Bastard Geoffrey he had brought into her nurseries.
What a glorious battle there had been then and how she had enjoyed it; it had pleased her to see the rage which possessed him because in some way it weakened him. When his temper was out of control and he kicked inanimate objects, when he lay on the floor and rolled about in an agony of rage and tore the dirty rushes with his teeth, he betrayed himself. That magnificent power and strength which were normally his were lost somehow in the man who might control armies but was not in command of his own nature.
She could not stop thinking of him and oddly enough her hatred of him absorbed her as once her love of him had done. Once she would have done everything in her power to advance him; now she would employ the same energy to destroying him.
How she loved this city. Her city! And he, Henry, was Duke of Aquitaine, but he should not remain so. That title was for her beloved son Richard; and when Richard became Duke of Aquitaine he should be so in truth. Henry was quite content to bestow titles on his sons as long as it was understood that no power went with them. His was to be the governing hand, as young Henry – proud to be called a king – was realising.
But it would not always be so. Already the people of Aquitaine were getting an inkling of the relationship between the King and the Queen; and there was no doubt where their loyalty lay. They demonstrated whenever she rode out that they regarded her as their Duchess and they would never submit to the fiery arrogant Angevin who regarded himself as the conqueror of Europe. No, they loved their Duchess Eleanor, the lady of song and learning, the adventurous Queen whose conduct had often scandalised the world, but even these scandals had only endeared her to her own people of the South.