She toasted him with her cup. ‘I am still deciding,’ she replied.
Henry set his cup down and drew her close to kiss her. ‘But you are open to persuasion?’
Alienor laughed. ‘I am always open to persuasion.’
Henry was ready to leave. In the courtyard his entourage waited for him as dawn pearled the sky. He fastened his cloak and with impatient vigour cast it back over his shoulder, a mannerism with which Alienor was already becoming familiar.
‘God speed you, my husband,’ she said. ‘I will pray for your success and your early return.’
‘I will pray for that too,’ Henry said with a grin. ‘This is like being invited to a feast where one is only allowed to snatch a taste of the first course before being dragged away.’
Alienor raised her brows. ‘It will keep your hunger sharp,’ she said.
‘There are no doubts on that score.’ He embraced her, his touch possessive now. He had gained confidence even in two days, but she enjoyed this assertion of his masculinity. It felt so good to be thought of as desirable rather than reviled as a creature of temptation.
She watched him lithely mount his horse: a fresh one from her stables. His own hard-ridden bay was resting up. This one was an iron-grey dapple with a raven mane and tail. She had provided horses for the rest of his entourage too.
Henry reined the horse about and rode over to her. ‘Until I come back to you with a crown.’ He made the horse rear and paw the air in a final salute, and then dropped him to all fours and rode out at a gallop, raising a cloud of dust.
Alienor felt a sense of emptiness when he had gone. She returned to her chamber. The maids had not yet tidied it and the bedclothes were rumpled. Henry’s pillow still bore the indentation of his head. A strand of red-gold hair sparkled there and gave her a sudden catch of breath. More evidence of his arrival in her life lingered in the sight of yesterday’s shirt and braies crumpled on the floor at the bedside. Henry was certainly not tidy and pernickety like Louis. She stooped to pick up the garments, pressing them to her nose to inhale the acrid, masculine scent.
After a moment she told herself off for behaving like a daydreaming girl and put the clothes with the other linens to be washed by the laundry maid.
46
Paris, Summer 1152
Louis looked at his seven-year-old eldest daughter, kneeling to pray with her eyes squeezed tightly shut. Her braided hair was pale flaxen like his and, kneeling in her blue dress with her head bowed, she looked angelic. Noticing a hint of her mother in the line of her cheek and her posture, he was stirred by a pang of regret and unease.
He felt nothing as strong as love for her but he did possess a kind of tepid affection. She was a good girl who said her prayers, sewed accomplished seams and only spoke when addressed. However, she was rarely in his eyeline. His visits to the nursery reminded him of Alienor’s failure to give him a son, and his two daughters were tangible proof of God’s disfavour. But for now, they were the heirs of Aquitaine and he still had a claim through them.
‘Amen,’ Marie said. She crossed herself and stood up, her eyes downcast. At her side stood Henri, lord of Champagne, to whom she had just been betrothed. His brother Theobald, who had made an abortive attempt to abduct Alienor on her way to Poitiers, had been betrothed to little Alix. She was only just walking and beginning to talk in single word imperatives, and had been carried to church in the arms of her nurse.
From Notre-Dame, the royal company processed solemnly back to the palace where a formal feast had been arranged to celebrate the betrothals. Henri treated Marie kindly, kissing her cheek and bidding her be a good girl and grow up swiftly so he could welcome her into his household as Countess of Champagne, after which she was taken away to the nursery with her little sister. In the great hall, the future husbands relaxed and basked in the knowledge that they were betrothed to princesses of France, and that Aquitaine was now firmly in their sphere.
‘My daughters will leave for the convent of Aveney on the morrow,’ Louis told the future bridegrooms. ‘They will be raised properly, uncorrupted, to make them fitting consorts.’
Sage nods of agreement followed his pronouncement. Convents were safe and suitable places to raise gently bred girls and keep them pure in thought and body.
‘How is my lord de Vermandois?’ asked Henri. ‘I was sorry to hear of his illness.’
‘He is recovering,’ Louis said shortly. ‘I have no doubt he will return to court soon.’ Raoul had been suffering from a general malaise ever since the annulment of his union with Petronella last autumn and his swift remarriage to Lauretta, sister of the Count of Flanders. There had been numerous risqué comments about the new bride wearing out her elderly husband, all of which Louis was trying to ignore.
An usher sidled towards him, a scroll in his hand. Louis beckoned to him with a sinking heart. A message delivered at the table was always important news – usually not good. He took the letter, broke the seal and, as he read what was written, grew white around the mouth.
‘What is it?’ Robert of Dreux leaned towards him in concern.
Louis’s expression contorted. ‘My former wife has married Henry of Anjou.’
A taut silence gripped the dais table.
‘But he’s in Normandy!’ Robert spluttered. ‘He’s at Barfleur!’
‘Not according to this letter.’ Louis swallowed, feeling sick. ‘He is in Poitiers and my wife – my former wife – has married him.’
‘Good God.’
Louis could not believe what he had just read. He felt sick remembering how the young man had come to court. The lowered eyes, the wary but respectful deference and all a front for secret negotiations. The thought of Alienor and the red-haired whelp from Anjou in bed together curdled his stomach. How could she, only two months after their annulment and with a youth of nineteen? And behind his back. The bitch, the whore!
‘They cannot do this,’ Robert said furiously. ‘They are vassals-in-chief; they must have your permission to wed. Since neither of them has sought it, they must be brought to account.’
Henri of Champagne and his brother nodded vigorous agreement, for the development was a massive threat to what they stood to gain from betrothals to Louis’s daughters.
‘I shall summon them to answer,’ Louis ground out.
‘You think they will come?’ Robert gave a disbelieving snort. ‘You’ll have to go further than that. Their marriage is consanguineous. You must write to Rome and bring the full force of the law down upon them.’
Louis nodded, although he was still reeling. Why had she done this? Out of lust because she was a corrupt woman? Because she believed she could manipulate a youth of nineteen into doing what she wanted as she had once manipulated him? Henry himself clearly had delusions of grandeur. ‘If they do not answer the summons, I shall indeed take it further.’
‘Believe me, they won’t,’ Robert said. ‘Act sooner rather than later.’
‘I will act when I decide,’ Louis snapped. He stamped off to be alone with his anger and humiliation that Alienor had seen fit to cavort with Henry of Anjou. Louis’s only consolation was that if she could not give him sons, she was never going to bear them to Henry, because God would punish the couple and render them barren. His own situation with recourse to his heirs was all her fault.
He was kneeling at the portable altar by his bed when his chamberlain craved admittance.