‘Madam.’ Alienor curtseyed to her.
The Empress inclined her head. ‘So,’ she said. ‘It is finally time.’ Her jaw was rigid with tension.
Alienor nodded but said nothing. In the weeks that they had been waiting for the weather to turn, Matilda had made it clear she would never set foot in England again. It was a place too full of hard and bitter experience. ‘You have no memories of England,’ she had said to Alienor. ‘It is your turn to go and make them – and may they all be good ones.’ She had not smiled. ‘The people want a new young king and his fecund wife. They want summer out of winter. I am wise enough to know that, and to send the new green shoots into England with my blessing but without my presence.’
Henry returned from the ship, dusting his hands. The wind blustered through his coppery curls and his eyes were narrowed against the sleety wind, showing the creases where one day lines of age would develop. The energy emanating from him was as vigorous and exuberant as the sea. This was his moment and he was seizing it with every fibre of his being.
‘Are you ready?’ he asked Alienor. ‘The tide will not wait much longer.’
‘Yes,’ she said and raised her chin. ‘I am.’
Henry turned to the Empress. ‘My lady mother.’ Kneeling to her, he bowed his head.
She set her hand to his ruffled curls in a tender gesture of benediction, and stooped to kiss him on both cheeks before raising him up. ‘Go with my blessing,’ she said, ‘and return to me an anointed king.’
Alienor knelt too and received the same. ‘God be with you and the child in your womb,’ Matilda said, and her kiss was maternal and warm.
Henry and Alienor joined the esnecca, Henry going first and handing Alienor down into the ship from the gangplank. The fresh smell of the sea was powerful in her nose and the slap of the tide rocked the ship, making it difficult to balance. The horizon was a misty haze.
On the shore, standing at the Empress’s side, Hugh de Boves, Archbishop of Rouen, raised his hands to bless the ship and the endeavour of its passengers, and the last mooring rope was cast off. The rowers took up the oars, wind surged into the sail, and the gap between land and sea widened to a yard of choppy grey water, then ten yards, then a hundred.
Alienor let out a long, cloudy breath as the coast of Normandy grew smaller and the figure of the Empress became a small dark finger on the shore.
Henry drew her against him. ‘Are you well?’ He stroked the curve of her belly, now six months round.
‘Yes.’ She smiled to dispel the anxiety in his gaze. ‘I am not afraid of sea crossings.’
‘But something is troubling you?’
She drew back to look up at him. ‘When you set foot on England’s shore it will be as her rightful king. It is your destiny. You know the land, you know the people; you have lived there and fought for your birthright. England only belongs to me because it belongs to you and I have yet to make it mine in my heart.’ She looked round. They had cleared the harbour and there was nothing in sight now but rough grey water. ‘But I am going into the unknown, and I do it out of the faith I have in you, and for our children, both the born and the unborn.’
He gazed at her, his eyes matching the wintry hue of the sea. She could feel the energy vibrating through him almost like the waves surging at the prow of the ship. ‘I will not break that faith,’ he said. ‘I swear to you. What is unknown is not yet written, and it is our chance to write as we choose – God willing.’
He kissed her and Alienor tasted cold salt on his lips and felt the firm grip of his hands either side of her womb. He was right. The unknown was unwritten, and together they faced the greatest opportunity of their lives.
Author’s Note
Alienor (Eleanor) of Aquitaine is one of the most famous queens in Western history and the subject of numerous biographies, plays and historical novels. More than eight hundred years after her death, she still exerts a magnetic fascination that continues to draw in each new generation. It could be said that she is one of the longest established examples of the cult of celebrity!
I have wanted to add my own Alienor novel to the oeuvre for some time, because although she has been the subject of a wide variety of works before, I feel a great deal has lain undiscovered or unsaid.
Alienor’s story has been constantly reinvented to suit each generation and I find the different versions fascinating. I was particularly interested in an article by historian Rágena C. DeAragon titled ‘Do we know what we think we know? Making assumptions about Eleanor of Aquitaine’. The piece is widely available online for anyone who wishes to look it up. The basic premise is that for all that has been written, we actually know very little and assume an awful lot about Alienor – and that includes the historians.
While writing The Summer Queen, I was constantly told that Alienor was a ‘woman ahead of her time’. But my own take is that she was a woman of her time doing her best within the boundaries of what society would permit. Any attempt to go outside those boundaries was immediately and sometimes brutally quashed, but she was nothing if not resilient.
I have called her Alienor in the body of the novel and not Eleanor because Alienor is what she would have called herself and it is how her name appears in her charters and in the Anglo-Norman texts when she is mentioned. I felt it was fitting to give her that recognition.
Alienor’s birth date in the past has been given as 1122, but historians now accept the more likely date of 1124 and that her marriage to Louis VII took place when she was thirteen – the age of consent for a girl then being twelve years old. I suspect her father knew he was not going to return from Compostela and arranged a secure future for his daughter (so he thought!) and Aquitaine before he left on his pilgrimage. Alienor is sometimes seen as a political player at this stage in the game, but when one looks at the hard facts, it becomes very clear that the power lay in the hands of the high barons and clergy of France and Aquitaine, and they were the ones brokering the deals.
We know Alienor’s father was on battle campaign with Geoffrey of Anjou the year before he died and I wonder (this is pure speculation) if he broached the subject of a betrothal between Alienor and his infant son Henry at that point. We do know from the historical record that the Counts of Anjou had long sought to unite their lands with those of Aquitaine. Geoffrey, keen to continue that pursuit, hoped to betroth little Henry to Alienor’s daughter Marie, and that match was considered for a while, before finally being turned down on the grounds of consanguinity (the all-purpose twelfth-century get-out clause should it need to be invoked). Geoffrey was still pursuing a link with Aquitaine though. I strongly believe that as the head of the family, the initial driving force behind the marriage arrangements that took place between Alienor and his then eighteen-year-old son Henry in Paris in 1151 were of his design. That Geoffrey did not live to see the marriage is a pity. It would have been interesting to observe the family dynamic.
I work hard at the historical research and do my best not to defame the dead, and I try to portray my characters within the realms of historical likelihood and to stay true to their characters, inasmuch as we know them from primary sources. However, this is a work of historical fiction and, within the parameters of integrity I set for myself, I have had the leeway to explore paths where historians might not choose to tread.
One of the great speculations of Alienor’s life is whether or not she committed adultery and incest with her uncle Raymond during her stay at Antioch during the Second Crusade. Several chroniclers accused her of improper behaviour while on the journey and there are dark hints about certain goings-on in Antioch, but when one reads the texts, none go so far as to accuse her of having sexual intercourse with her uncle. Some biographers have taken the bit between their teeth and decided Alienor probably did have an affair with Raymond anyway, but to me the evidence fails to stack up. Alienor and Raymond were both astute players who had been through the political mill. They were together for around nine days, and while I am certain that plotting and manoeuvring went on, I can’t see either of them kicking over the traces and going mad with lust for each other in that short space of time, especially as Raymond was known to be a devoted and faithful husband. It doesn’t ring true.