"I am overruled by my womenfolk," the king said by way of apology, with a wry smile, "but my mother points out, and wisely, too, that Alienor must not be upset this far along in her confinement. I cannot help but concur, and my Provençal rose will have her son by her side." He shrugged with apparent helplessness.
"Then, I am free to return home to Ashlin," Ranulf said.
"Nay, my good de Glandeville, I would have you attend our coronation," the king replied. "You will remain with the court and cross over to England with us. I am grateful for your loyalty, and would offer you this small reward."
Ranulf bowed. "I thank you, my liege, but serving you with fidelity is naught worthy of a reward."
"Nonetheless, you shall have it," the king said jovially.
He was dismissed, and he knew it. Ranulf bowed again, and moved back into the crowd of milling courtiers. He wanted to go home! He didn't want to travel with Henry Plantagenet’s great train from Normandy to England and see him coronated in Westminster. He wanted to go home! He had come here on Henry’s whim. His mission had come to nothing because of a woman’s whim. His reward was to watch these two high nobles crowned king and queen of England. He had wanted a castle, but he had done nothing to warrant such a reward, nor would his Simon ever serve a prince as companion. Ranulf de Glandeville faced the fact that he was not an important man, although for a few brief months he had dared to dream.
On the morning of December seventh, the weather cleared just slightly. The king ordered their immediate departure, despite the fact the harbor master warned the weather would turn foul again before the sunset, and they would be caught in midchannel.
"We go!"the king said, and personally oversaw the loading of the boats with his knights and horses. The queen and her serving women were the only females with the great train; but Alienor, used to hard travel having gone on the first crusade to Jerusalem when she was France’s queen, was not fazed at all. She jollied her frightened servants along, walking up the gangplank of her vessel with her small son at her side, holding his hand.
The skies were gray, and the winds were brisk as they made their way out of Barfleur harbor. The seas grew rougher, and then a fog set in separating the ships of the great fleet from one another. Ranulf, Garrick Taliferro, and their squires had taken passage aboard a small smack with one of the king’s chaplains. They had secured the horses and the mule, sheltering them from the waves as best as they could. Then they sat together as the captain and his two sailors sailed their vessel toward England. Night came, and the sound of trumpets echoing in the fog to indicate where the vessels were, was somehow comforting. They shared their wine, bread, cheese, and sausage. The priest was, afterward, lost in his prayers for their safety as the ship bounced and bounded across the choppy waters. Up, up, up went the bow of the boat, and Ranulf could hear the wind rushing past beneath it just before it crashed into the sea again. The two young squires fell into a fitful sleep, their nerves raw.
The two men could not make out one another in the darkness, and so Sir Garrick did not see the look on Ranulf’s face when he said, "Why were you really in Normandy, my friend?"
There was surely no need for secrecy now, he thought. So Ranulf told his companion the truth, admitting to his confusion when the plans changed not once, but twice. "It was a fool’s errand, but how could I refuse a king?"
"You couldn't," Garrick replied. "Men like Henry Plantagenet are not like the rest of us. It would never have occurred to him that he was badly inconveniencing you. And indeed he meant no harm. You know that I envy you, Ranulf? I envy your manor and wife and child. You will go home now, and not have to depend upon the vagaries of a king’s wishes in the future."
"But I will not get my castle."
"Your castle?" Garrick was puzzled.
"I hoped that in doing the king a great service, he would allow me to build a small keep at Ashlin. We are so close to the Welsh, and a little castle would help to better control the king’s borders."
"He'll eventually make some kind of arrangement with the Welsh princes," Garrick told his friend. "You may be certain of it."
"But a castle would reinforce that arrangement. I know I'm no great lord, but still I had hoped to better myself by doing this favor for the king. In the end it has come to nothing." Ranulf sighed. Then he asked, "Did you not tell me when the king was crowned, you would go home and find a wife? What is to prevent you from doing that, Garrick? You have land. Take a wife from among the merchant class, preferably one who has a rich father. There is no shame in that, my friend."
"I think I shall," Garrick Taliferro said. "I am growing weary of this single life. My mother is no longer a young woman. She would be happy for a daughter and grandchildren."
In the morning the fog finally lifted, and they found themselves just outside of Southampton harbor. Shortly after landing, they learned the king’s vessel had been sighted, coming aground just a few miles down the beach near New Forest. Taking their horses, the two knights hurried to find their master, their squires coming in their wake. Word that the king had ridden on the very back of the storm to reach England with his queen and his heir soon spread. The English were joyous.
The great fleet had been badly scattered in the storm, but no ships had been lost. The boats came ashore up and down the coast, debarking their inhabitants and their horses, all of whom met at the various crossroads from Southampton to Winchester, where the king was to go first to secure the royal treasury. Those men who had been King Stephen’s strongest adherents waited fearfully to see what would happen, but none dared to call for a rebellion against Henry Plantagenet, grandson of Henry I, and England’s soon-to-be anointed king.
Thibault, the Archbishop of Canterbury, had gathered together all the bishops of importance to await the king’s arrival in London. The coronation would take place in Westminster, although the great cathedral was in poor condition from long neglect. Still, it was the traditional crowning place of England’s kings, and on the Sunday before Christmas in 1154, Henry Plantagenet and Alienor of Aquitaine were crowned king and queen of England. He was twenty-one, and she thirty.
Afterward the king and queen rode through London, showing themselves to the people, magnificent in their coronation garb. The king’s white velvet tunic was embroidered with lions and lilies. He was young, handsome, healthy. His willingness to come to England despite the season and the hard crossing told his people that here was a man who would rule with vigor and enthusiasm. The beautiful queen was garbed also in white velvet, her gold and be-jeweled girdle glittering in the rare sunshine on this cold December day, her gold hair caught up in a golden and pearl caul, a bejeweled crown upon her head. She looked no older than her husband.
"Vivat rex!" cried the Normans.
"Waes hael!" shouted those English of Saxon descent.
The king and queen acknowledged the joyful greetings of their new subjects as they made their way through the city, and from there to Bermondsey, where they had taken up residence. The palace at Westminster, rebuilt on the original Saxon site by the king’s great-uncle, William Rufus, and made even more beautiful by his grandfather, Henry I, had, like the great cathedral, been despoiled and given over to neglect in the civil war between Stephen and Matilda. A feast was held that night, and bonfires blazed all over the city and surrounding countryside in celebration of the new king.