seething at her abandonment by her craven allies. At least anger provided its own energy. Far more frightening was what followed-the loss of hope as she reached two unwelcome milestones. June marked her sixth month as a prisoner. And in June, she’d observed her fiftieth birthday. As a child, that had seemed such a vast age to her. Now she saw it as a death sentence, for how likely was it that she’d outlive the husband who was nine years younger than she?
You’ll never see the sun again, he’d warned, and she had no reason to doubt him. In her time of greatest need, her deliverance depended upon a spiteful former husband and her callow young sons. How had she ever let it come to this? That was a question she could not face, and to avoid it, she’d turned to the Almighty for support and solace. Her religious faith had been the conventional kind, practiced but not pondered. She’d dutifully attended Mass, distributed alms, made generous donations to abbeys like Fontevrault, and felt that she’d kept up her end of the bargain. She’d rarely prayed for specific boons, except during those unhappy years when she’d been unable to give Louis a son, scorned by her critics as a barren queen, and those prayers had gone unanswered.
At Falaise, she’d asked the Almighty to let her sons win this war, knowing that nothing less would gain her release. But as summer bloomed and her hopes withered, she’d begun to offer up a more desperate prayer, beseeching God to end her confinement any way He chose, for she’d also begun to fear that in such utter despair lay madness.
July dawned with storms and high winds. Eleanor closed the shutters against the rain and spent much of her time trying to sleep, the only means of escape available to her. And so she was in bed on a wet, dreary afternoon when she heard footsteps out in the stairwell. It was pride rather than curiosity that induced her to sit up and straighten her clothing, for she did not expect this to be a visitor she wanted to see. It had been more than a fortnight since Perrin had waited upon her. A fellow guard had complained that he was unduly friendly with the royal prisoner, and duties had been found for him elsewhere. Losing her only link to the outside world was the final straw, and soon afterward she’d spiraled down into a deep depression.
She’d gotten to her feet by the time a brusque knock sounded and the door was pushed open to admit Maurice de Craon. She greeted him coolly, hoping she’d managed to conceal her unease; she very much doubted that his arrival heralded good news.
“Madame,” he said formally. “As a courtesy, I am informing you that you should make ready to depart on the morrow. We will be leaving at first light.”
Eleanor abandoned her attempt at studied indifference. “Where,” she said sharply, “will we be going?”
The Angevin baron regarded her in silence for a long moment, his dark eyes alight with grim satisfaction. “Barfleur,” he said, “where you will be taking ship for England.”
Eleanor was surprised to find that she’d have company on her journey to Barfleur: her fellow prisoners, the Earl and Countess of Leicester and Hugh of Chester. They were just as startled to see her, apparently unaware that she was sharing their confinement, and she spared a grateful thought for her chatty young source, Perrin. Of the three, imprisonment seemed to have left the lightest mark upon Peronelle, which made sense, for she’d known that as a woman, she’d have the best chance of regaining her freedom. Her husband appeared to have aged, to have lost some of his bluster. But the one most affected by captivity was the Earl of Chester. Hugh was thin and pallid. Always high-strung, he looked almost haunted now, and Eleanor glanced away, hearing Maud’s accusing words echoing on the wind: It is not enough you’ve poisoned your own well. No, you must poison mine, too!
It took nearly three days to reach Barfleur, for the downpour continued and the roads were deep in mud. Barfleur was the primary port for Channel crossings and the largest town on that rock-hewn peninsula. But the royal castle was a few miles to the south, and it was there that Eleanor expected to pass her last night on French soil. She was to get a shock, though, as the castle walls came into sight, for a familiar red and gold banner flew from the keep-signaling that the King of England was in residence.
Eleanor’s tired body tensed; it had never occurred to her that she’d be sailing back to England with Henry. The other prisoners had seen the royal standard, too, much to their dismay. They exchanged nervous looks as they were escorted into the bailey, for they were no more eager than Eleanor to confront the king. Despite the chill dampness of the dusk, sweat mingled with rain drops upon the Earl of Leicester’s ruddy face as he remembered his last meeting with Henry, remembered with appalling clarity that he’d drawn his sword upon his sovereign. The nasty weather notwithstanding, the bailey was crowded with spectators, nudging and jostling one another as they sought to get a good look at the new arrivals.
Eleanor knew she was the true attraction. They were there to gape at the captive queen. Well, if they wanted a show, by God she’d given them one. “My lord de Craon,” she said imperiously, waving aside a groom and waiting for the baron himself to assist her in dismounting. He did, with poor grace, scowling as she took time to adjust the hood of her mantle and straighten the cuffs of her gloves. He gestured toward a corner tower, but just then the door to the great hall burst open and Joanna came flying out. Heedless of the rain and mud, she splashed across the bailey to fling herself into Eleanor’s arms.
Eleanor’s hood fell back, and she was soon as wet as her daughter, but she did not care, and they clung together in a wordless embrace that ended only when she glanced up and saw her husband standing in the doorway of the hall. Hugh and Leicester at once dropped submissively to their knees, but Henry never took his eyes from his wife, and she shivered, for if looks were lethal, she’d have died then and there in the bailey of Barfleur Castle.
Eleanor was escorted to a small bedchamber on the upper story of the keep. Her reunion with Joanna had been a brief one, cut short when Henry sent someone out to retrieve the girl, using the bad weather as a pretext. Eleanor had assured her daughter that they’d meet again, although she did not know if that were true or not. It seemed the ultimate irony to her that she could lose her children twice in one lifetime, and while she damned both Louis and Henry, she cursed, too, a society in which fathers were given so much power and mothers so little.
After realizing that she’d not heard a key turning in the lock, she dared to open the door, only to discover an armed guard. He saluted her politely, as if he were posted there for her protection, and she puzzled him by laughing shrilly. She forced herself to eat some of the meal brought by a silent servant, but she kept listening for the sounds of footsteps in the stairwell. When she finally heard a murmur of voices, she watched the door open, with mingled hope and dread, not knowing if it would be her daughter or her enraged husband.
“It’s me, Maman!” Joanna’s pronouncement was superfluous, her smile joyful. Eleanor had just gathered the girl into her arms when she added happily, “I brought you another visitor!” And to Eleanor’s amazement, her daughter-in-law stepped, smiling, into the room.
That was the best evening Eleanor had known in months. The girls were as delighted to see her as she was to see them, eager to share their news, to tell her of the fall of Poitiers and Marguerite’s ill-fated visit, the capture of Saintes, and the return of the Count of Flanders to the rebel coalition. They’d been living in Rouen, they explained, until they were urgently summoned to Barfleur by Henry, and they would all be going with him to England as soon as the weather cleared. And as she listened, Eleanor felt hope beginning to spark midst the ashes of a dead fire. This sudden change of plans could only mean that the war was going badly for Henry in England.
Joanna and Marguerite had kept their visit short, understanding that they’d lose the privilege if they abused it, promising to return upon the morrow. Joanna had seemed surprised when asked how they’d managed to get permission, saying airily that “I asked Papa,” as if his consent had never been in doubt. Eleanor knew better, and grudgingly gave Henry credit where due; he could easily have kept Joanna away, just as Louis had done with their daughters. But once he’d agreed, it would not be that easy to change his mind, which meant that she’d be able to see Joanna and Marguerite again. There would be opportunities, for it was not uncommon to wait days, even weeks, for a favorable wind.
They’d been stranded in Barfleur for almost a month as they’d waited to cross the Channel for Henry’s coronation, finally sailing in heavy seas when his patience ran out. That was not a memory to give Eleanor comfort; it was painful to remember the jubilant woman she’d been on that November eve twenty years ago, willing to depart in a gale because she was so sure that God was on their side, so confident that she and Henry were masters of their own fate, destined to rule over the greatest court in Christendom and not to drown like those poor doomed souls on the White Ship.
The next day was even more rain-sodden and windy, and Eleanor’s faith was rewarded in mid-afternoon
