was trapped in a burning bell tower at Wherwell Abbey; I told you that story, love, remember? I’m guessing that he was gambling again at Newbury, this time upon how well he knew Stephen.”
“A diabolic wager, for certes,” Eleanor said, shaking her head incredulously, “with his son’s life as the stakes…”
“He judged Stephen rightly, though,” Henry pointed out, “but at what a cost if he had not!”
“I cannot help wondering,” Eleanor said, “how the boy’s mother felt about it. Henry…you would not have hanged the child?”
“No,” Henry said, leaning over to pour them both more wine, “I would not. But neither would I have threatened to hang him, as Stephen did. That was his great mistake. No man ought to make a threat he is not willing to carry out, especially a king-”
They were interrupted then by the arrival of a courier from England, bearing an urgent message for Henry. Excusing himself, he hastened down to the great hall. He was gone longer than Eleanor had expected; the servants had cleared away the dishes and brought up a bowl of costly imported oranges before he returned. Eleanor had been peeling an orange for him, but she set the fruit aside at sight of her husband’s face. “The news was not good?”
He shook his head. “A desperate appeal from William Boterel, the castellan of Wallingford Castle. They have been under siege for months, and they doubt that they can hold out much longer. Stephen has seized the bridge, so they no longer have a way of getting supplies into the castle and their larders are well-nigh empty.”
“This Wallingford…is it an important castle, Henry?”
“Yes, for it controls the Upper Thames Valley. But it has more than tactical significance. The man who held it, Brien Fitz Count, was the most steadfast of my mother’s supporters. It was to Wallingford that she fled when she made that miraculous escape from Oxford. Wallingford…well, it came to signify resistance, our hope for victory…” He’d begun to pace. Halting before the hearth, he stood for several moments, gazing into the flames.
Watching him, Eleanor already knew what he would do. “You are going to Wallingford’s rescue,” she said. “You are going to brave a January crossing of the Channel and launch a winter campaign. You do realize, Harry, how mad that sounds?”
“Of course I do,” he said, and smiled wryly. “That is why I’ll take Stephen utterly by surprise.”
The hearth had burned low, and embers glowed in the shadows, visible from the bed. Henry leaned over and kissed his wife’s throat, just below her ear. “Why are you not asleep yet?”
“I’ve a lot to think about,” she said, “much of it troubling. I intend to invite my sister to stay with me once you’ve gone. She still mourns for Raoul, and now her son has been taken away from her…Where is the justice in that?”
“Well…in fairness to Louis, he probably meant to reward Beaumont, not to punish Petronilla. After all, how often are women given wardships?”
“Precisely my point,” she retorted. “Women are the ones who must bear children, suffering the travails of the birthing chamber, and indeed, often dying to give life. And yet we have no say about what happens to the child afterward. It would never even have occurred to John Marshal to consult his wife ere he dared Stephen to hang their son. No more than Louis cared how he grieved Petra by putting her children’s future into the hands of a self- seeking lout like Waleran Beaumont. It is so unfair, Harry, so outrageously unfair.”
Henry had honestly never given the matter of wardships much thought. His views about women were conflicted, as the son of a strong-willed, defiantly independent woman in a world that taught him females were inferior, meant to be ruled by men. Following neither the well-traveled road of tradition nor the rocky, lonely trail Maude had blazed, he’d found his own path, not challenging their society’s concept of male dominance, but acknowledging individual accomplishments in women like his mother-or his wife.
“There is some truth to what you say,” he conceded, made cautious because they were venturing into unmapped territory; until now, they’d rarely discussed her daughters. “You are talking, too, about Marie and Alix… are you not?”
“Yes,” she admitted, “I suppose I am…”
Henry propped himself up on his elbow, but it was too dark to see her face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “If I could get them back for you, Eleanor, I would. But it is beyond my power, and not even a crown will change that.”
“I know,” she said. “Why do you think I mention them so seldom? Because they are lost to me. Louis will never allow me to see them, and there is nothing I can do about it.” She turned toward him in the dark, seeking his embrace. “He’ll teach them to hate me, Harry, and there is nothing I can do about that, either.”
Henry tightened his arms around her. “It is not as easy as people think to poison a child’s mind. During my mother’s years in England, there were few at my father’s court to speak well of her. God knows he did not. Your Marie is older than I was when my mother left us, old enough to hold fast to her own memories-as I did.”
“Yes, but you knew your mother had not abandoned you. Abandonment will be the least of my maternal sins.”
“I’ll not deny that they’ll hear slanderous stories about you. But your notoriety might well work to your benefit, for you’ll not be like other discarded wives, Eleanor, to be cast aside and forgotten. Your daughters will grow up knowing that you are the Duchess of Aquitaine and Normandy and, God Willing, Queen of England. How can your girls not be curious about you? And once they are old enough, I think they’ll want to find out for themselves what sort of woman you are.”
“Jesu, Harry, what comfort can I take in that? The chance of a reunion twenty years from now?” But almost at once, Eleanor regretted her sharpness. “I am not being fair, am I? Had you offered me empty promises, vowed to win them back, then I’d have blamed you for lying to me. My nerves are on the raw tonight, more so than I realized.”
Henry kissed her gently. He could not ease her yearning for her daughters. But he did have a parting gift for her. “When you write to your sister, ask her to join you at Angers, not Poitiers.”
“Why?”
“I shall ask my mother to watch over Normandy in my absence. And of course you will continue to govern Aquitaine. But I would also have you act on my behalf in Anjou.”
As he’d guessed, that pleased her immensely. “Do you trust me as much as that, then?”
“Why not? You have sound political sense and good judgment, too…for a woman,” he teased, and pretended to wince when she nipped his neck. How he was going to miss sharing her bed in the months to come. “With you and my mother keeping vigil for me, I’ll not have to worry about my fool brother stirring up another revolt. Without Geoff to distract me, I’ll have a better chance of avoiding a heroic, martyr’s death on some godforsaken English field.”
“Do not jest about that,” she chided, with a gravity that he found quite flattering. She quickly lapsed back, though, into the bantering levity that was the coin of their marital realm. “I do not want you to take any needless risks, Harry. I would hate to have to start husband-hunting all over again.”
“I doubt that you’d have to hunt very hard,” he said dryly. “Most likely you’d find yourself fending off suitors at my wake.” Yawning, he drew her into an even closer embrace, and soon after, fell asleep. When he awoke, it was almost dawn. The fire had gone out and the chamber was cold and damp. But Eleanor’s body was warm against his, her skin soft to his touch, and fragrant with her favorite perfume, one that she said put her in mind of summer roses and moonlight and honey-sweet sins.
Why was it sinful, though, to lay with his wife? Henry could not understand the Church’s reasoning. Why was celibacy so holy, carnal lust so sinister? Even in wedlock, it remained suspect, for he’d heard priests claim that a man sinned if he loved his wife with too much passion. If that was true, he was putting his immortal soul in peril about twice a night. Laughing softly to himself, Henry reached for Eleanor.
Eleanor awoke with reluctance, for she’d been dreaming that she and Henry were making love, alone in a secluded meadow, with scented clover for their bed and a sapphire-blue sky for their ceiling. She’d never done that, never made love out in the open under a hot summer sun, and her first thought upon awakening was a drowsy regret for all she’d missed. And then she smiled, understanding why her dream had veered off into that meadow.
“Now you’re seducing me in my dreams, too,” she murmured, and laughed when he said that was passing strange, for in his dreams, she was always the temptress. She knew that their honeymoon harmony was not likely to last. They were both too self-willed not to clash occasionally, and she did not doubt that they would sail into rough seas at times. But she felt quite confident that their marriage bed would always be a safe harbor. Whether
