heir, and Eustace had soon forfeited his sympathy by turning upon his weeping wife, rebuking her for making a spectacle of her grief. But when he thought about the funeral later, it was Eustace’s isolation that the monk would remember, his inability to end his self-imposed exile even on the day of his mother’s funeral.
Letting the flower drop back onto the tomb, Brother Leonard said softly, “Ah, my lady, how will we ever learn to abide your loss?” Crossing to the High Altar, he knelt and began to pray for Matilda’s soul, although he was confident that if ever there was one judged worthy of passing straight through Purgatory into Heaven, it would be the queen. He was still on his knees when he heard the voices in the nave.
“Do you wish me to go with you, my lord?”
“No, I’d have you await me out here.”
Brother Leonard scrambled to his feet, for he’d recognized the second voice, a low guttural growl that still evoked distinctive echoes of his native Flanders. He heard the tapping now of a cane against the tiles, and was tempted to duck out before William de Ypres became aware of his presence. But he hesitated too long. The cane halted its sweep, and the Fleming said challengingly, “Who is there?”
“It is me, my lord…one of the monks.” Although Ypres had always treated him with a gruff, offhand courtesy, Brother Leonard was never fully at ease in his company. The Fleming had been the queen’s closest ally; between them, they’d managed to keep Stephen and the Archbishop of Canterbury from a final and irrevocable split, patching up one peace after another as the need arose. But Brother Leonard was not ignorant of Ypres’s lurid past. Monks liked to gossip, too, and he’d heard all the stories, knew that until Ypres had begun to lose his sight, he’d been one of the king’s most brilliant and brutal mercenary captains. Reason told him that the man was no longer dangerous, for he was in his sixties, an age as vast as Methuselah’s to the twenty-year-old monk, and he was utterly blind in one eye, going blind in the other. But whenever he gazed into those oddly opaque eyes, Brother Leonard felt as if he were looking at an aged wolf, fangs worn down, but by no means harmless.
“Brother…Leonard, is it not?”
“Yes, my lord, it is.” Surprised and rather flattered that the Fleming remembered him so readily, he gestured toward the queen’s tomb. “I was saying a prayer for my lady. I…I owed her so much. I was hired to help out in the infirmary, and when the queen learned of my desire to serve God, she persuaded Abbot Clarembald to accept me as a novice, even though I was of humble birth and without two coins to rub together. And when it was time for me to take my vows, she came down from London to bear witness. She did all that for me,” he said wonderingly, “and got nothing in return. But as long as I have breath, she’ll have my prayers.”
“You’re wrong, lad. It gave her great pleasure that she’d been able to guide you ‘onto the road to Heaven,’ as she liked to say.” Ypres’s smile was both wry and weary. “She talked of you often, you and all her other lost lambs.”
Without warning, tears flooded the young monk’s eyes. “I know it is not for a poor wretch like me to question the Ways of Almighty God, but…but why did He have to take her now, when we still needed her so much?”
The Fleming reached out, resting the palm of his hand against the cold, unyielding marble of Matilda’s tomb. “If you truly loved her, lad,” he said, “be grateful that He did take her now.”
51
Poitiers, Poitou
May 1152
Petronilla found Eleanor up on the battlements of the palace keep. The sky was streaking and the Rivers Clain and Boivre curved around the city like flowing ribbons of gold, but the light had yet to fade. Following Eleanor’s gaze toward the north, Petronilla saw what had drawn her eyes: a small band of fast-riding horsemen, leaving a trail of dust in their wake as they approached the Pont de Rochereuil. “Eleanor…you think that is Harry?”
Eleanor nodded. “He said he’d be arriving on Whitsunday Eve, late in the day, between Vespers and Compline.”
“Yes, but surely he’d have a more impressive escort than that?”
“Jesu forfend,” Eleanor said emphatically. “The last thing we want is to attract attention ere we’re safely wed. He said he’d bring just enough men to fend off robbers, traveling as inconspicuously as possible.” She kept her eyes intently upon those distant riders, who were now passing the abbey of St Jean de Montierneuf. “Although I doubt that he’d have brought a large retinue in any event. He does not seem to care much for pomp and ceremony.”
“A son of the Empress Maude? If that is so, he must be a changeling!” When Eleanor failed even to acknowledge the jest, Petronilla subjected her sister to a closer scrutiny. “Eleanor…are you having misgivings?”
“Not about the man, Petra. But the marriage…yes, a few misgivings.”
Petronilla was not taken totally by surprise, for she’d noticed that Eleanor had become more and more preoccupied and pensive as her wedding day drew near. “Why?”
Eleanor was quiet for a few moments. “I suppose,” she said, “because of the past two months, two months in which I was accountable to no man for what I did or what I wanted. I’ve never had freedom like that before, and I found it a sweet taste, indeed…”
“But what good is freedom without security, Eleanor? You need a man to protect Aquitaine from the French Crown and to protect you from those hordes of would-be husbands, eager to share your domains with you, whether you willed it or not.”
“You need not fret, Petra. I am not about to leave Harry at the altar. You are right-I do need a man for the very practical reasons you’ve just argued. And for reasons you did not mention. I want more children. I want a man in my bed again, one who has more in mind than prayer. And I want a crown, I’ll not deny it. All of which I’ve a good chance of getting from Harry.”
Sure now that it was indeed her future husband who was entering her city, Eleanor moved away from the battlements, for she wanted to be below in the great hall to greet him upon his arrival. “I just wish,” she said, with a skepticism that held an oddly wistful note, too, “that the balance of power in a marriage was not tilted so much in the man’s favor.”
Henry could not seem to get comfortable in the bed. For the tenth time, he repositioned his pillow. When he flung the sheets back, he soon felt chilled, but when he drew the covers up, he was too hot. By his increasingly exasperated reckoning, it was well past midnight. This sleepless night before his wedding was shaping up to be the longest one of his entire life.
In less than twelve hours, he and Eleanor were to be wed in the cathedral of St Pierre. She’d made all the arrangements, leaving him nothing to do but show up. He could see the sense in it, for Poitiers was her capital city. He just wasn’t accustomed to being a bystander, marching to a drumbeat not his own.
Their wedding was to be a simple affair, not at all the sort of lavish royal spectacle that would normally have attended the marriage of a Duke of Normandy and a Duchess of Aquitaine, a onetime queen and a would-be king. Henry remembered hearing that when Eleanor and the French king wed, the revelries had lasted for three full days. But for them, there would be nothing so extravagant or elaborate, just a wedding supper after the church ceremony, for had they invited all their vassals to celebrate their wedding, as would be customary, they’d have risked having their nuptials interrupted by an invading French army.
Henry hoped that Eleanor did not feel cheated. Mayhap one royal wedding in a woman’s lifetime was enough for her. For himself, he did not care. He’d always been more interested in where he was going than in how he got there. And even if he’d been one to enjoy such prolonged and high-flown festivities, not here, not now, not in this company for certes.
Eleanor had summoned a few of her most eminent vassals to bear witness to her wedding, those men too devoted or too proud to learn of her marriage after-the-fact. Geoffrey de Rancon, Lord of Taillebourg. Saldebreuil de Sanzay, formerly Eleanor’s constable, newly named as her seneschal. The lords of Lusignan and Thourars. The Count of Angouleme. They’d not liked Eleanor’s first marriage to the French king, and it soon became obvious to Henry that they were not enthusiastic about her second match, either. Their courtesy was cold enough to threaten frostbite, and they watched him as warily as sheepdogs protecting their flocks from a marauding Angevin wolf.
