you, my lord husband,” she said, with sarcasm that Henry pretended to take at face value.
“Glad to be of service. You must miss being able to order men around.” Moving to the table, he poured wine for himself. “Why are you here, Eleanor?”
“I want to talk to you.”
“My lucky day,” he muttered, but he poured a second cup for her.
“If I promise to be on my best behavior,” she said, “can we conduct this conversation sitting down?” When he hesitated, she scowled at him, a scowl he’d seen hundreds of times over the years. “Jesu, Harry, must you be so stubborn? Does your doctor have to tie you to a chair to get you off that bad leg?”
He threw up his hands in mock surrender. “No, he just has to set you on me.” Limping across the chamber, he sat down heavily upon his bed.
Eleanor followed with their wine cups. Pulling a chair closer to the bed, she studied him critically. “Your fever has returned, else you’d not look so flushed. Harry, how do you expect to heal if you will not get the rest you need?”
“Enough,” he said impatiently. She noticed, though, that he settled back against the pillows with a sigh of relief. “So…what do you want to talk about?”
“I heard something very interesting in the hall today-that you and Louis are locking horns again, this time over Richard’s marriage to Alys. And no, it was not Maud who told me; I overheard your justiciar talking with Ralf de Glanville. Is it true that you are facing the threat of an Interdict?”
“Not a serious one. Louis complained last year to the Pope that I was unduly delaying the marriage. To placate him, the Pope agreed to send a legate with a papal bull that would lay my lands under Interdict, but he gave the legate no instructions to publish it, for the Holy See does not want another breach with England. Louis has been making such a pest of himself, though, that the legate insisted that I meet with them to discuss the matter-which I’ll gladly do if this blasted leg ever heals.”
“When you meet them, what then? I know you’re not keen on the marriage.”
“Why should I be? You think I want to hand another son over to Louis, trussed up like a Martinmas stoat? That worked out so well with Hal, after all. And the girl brings no marriage portion to speak of. I must have been mad to agree to the betrothal.”
Eleanor knew why he had, of course. He’d been eager to get Louis to acknowledge his sons as his heirs, Hal for England and Normandy and Anjou, Richard for Aquitaine, and Geoffrey for Brittany. She’d often thought it was ironic that one of his purest impulses-his desire to protect the succession for Hal-had been such an unmitigated disaster. “So what will you tell Louis and the legate?”
“That I am quite willing to have the marriage take place-once Louis fulfills his side of the bargain and turns over the dowries he promised-the French Vexin for Marguerite and the city of Bourges for Alys.”
Eleanor’s eyes widened at the sheer audacity of the demand. “Harry, Louis did turn over the Norman Vexin to you, and we both know he never promised Bourges for Alys.”
“The Norman Vexin was mine by rights; why would I settle for that? And I am sure Louis would have offered Bourges if it had occurred to him at the time. What father would want his daughter to go to her marriage bed as a pauper?”
“Louis would sooner give you every drop of blood in his body ere he’d surrender Bourges. So what are you really after?”
He shrugged. “You tell me.”
“Very well. Clearly, you are seeking to put Louis on the defensive. If he backs off from insisting upon the marriage, you are then free to look for a more profitable bride for Richard. If he agrees to provide a dowry, you still win. My guess is that you are simply trying to make the problem go away, mayhap beguile Louis into making a peace that will allow you to meddle in the Auvergne and Berry, where you and the French have competing claims.”
Henry had forgotten how sharp she could be, had forgotten how much he’d once enjoyed talking to her about the stratagems, subterfuges, and feints that were such an important part of a king’s arsenal. Reluctant to admit that she’d read him so easily, he did not reply.
Eleanor sipped her wine while she mulled over the implications of this latest clash between Henry and Louis. “What does Richard think of all this? Since Alys is his betrothed, I assume you did mention it to him?”
He surprised her then by saying, “As it happens, I did. We talked about this ere he returned to Poitou last summer. He showed very little interest in the subject, was much more interested in discussing the aid I’d provide against the Poitevin rebels.”
That rang true to Eleanor. She knew Richard had never indicated the slightest desire to wed Alys; she doubted that he’d ever given much thought to the girl at all. “So you are saying that Richard is indifferent, cares little whether he weds her or not.”
“That sums it up rather well. For certes, he is not burning to take a wife. Unlike Geoffrey, who keeps dropping hints heavier than anvils, reminding me that he is in his nineteenth year now and Constance is sixteen, more than old enough for the holy state of matrimony.”
That rang true, too, for Richard had nothing to gain by wedding Alys and Geoffrey had a great deal to gain by wedding Constance. Their marriage would validate his claim to Brittany, and he’d no longer be dependent upon Henry’s good will, would have power of his own. Eleanor suspected that the very reasons which made the marriage so attracttive to Geoffrey were why Henry seemed in no hurry for it to happen. But that was a worry for a later time, and more Geoffrey’s concern than hers. The hardest part of confinement was accepting the fact that she could no longer influence the course of events or even the interactions in her own family.
“It sounds,” she said, “as if you have the situation well in hand.”
He shot her a suspicious look. “And that sounds as if you are actually supporting me in this.”
“Why would I not? I agree that we can do better for Richard than Alys, and I’d like nothing better than to see Louis discomfited and humbled. He proved to be an even worse ally than he was a husband.”
“As you ought to have known,” he pointed out, and she acknowledged the truth of that with a rueful smile. He had propped himself up on his elbow and was regarding her so impassively that she realized she had not the slightest idea what he was thinking. “So,” he said, after a brief silence, “you’d raise no objections if I disavowed the plight-troth. But what if Richard truly wanted to wed the girl?”
“In that case, I would fight for the marriage till my last breath,” she murmured and saw that she’d finally managed to startle him.
“Your honesty is commendable, if rather reckless, for you’ve hardly reassured me of your good faith should I set you free.”
“Could you ever trust me again, Harry?”
He did not even pause for breath. “No, never.”
“Exactly,” she said. “So what would be the point of telling you what I thought you’d want to hear? I know marriage is not usually fertile ground for the truth, but mayhap a little truth-telling might have helped us avoid some of the grief of recent years.”
He was openly skeptical. “Are you saying that you’re going to forswear lies from now on, speak only God’s truth? I’ll believe that when unicorns roam the English countryside.”
“Go ahead,” she challenged, “ask me a question, then. But I ought to warn you that the rules of the game apply to you, too.”
He considered it, but she knew he was never one to refuse a challenge. “Very well. Do you regret the rebellion?”
“You can do better than that, Harry. Of course I do. Ask me something less obvious.”
“What do you regret? That you set my sons against me? Or that you lost?”
“Better,” she conceded. “Both. Now…your turn. Answer me honestly. If I’d demanded that you put Rosamund Clifford aside, would you have done so?”
“No.”
“And if I’d asked it of you?”
That gave him pause. “I am not sure,” he admitted. “I just do not know, Eleanor.”
“Fair enough. Your turn.”
She’d expected a question about Rosamund, for she knew he still thought jealousy was at the root of their estrangement. But what he asked was far more dangerous. “That day at Falaise…why did you not seek my
