“No, it does not, my lord.” The lie came readily to her lips for she’d recognized that any liaison with Henry would have consequences that were sure to spill over into every corner of her life. Until last night she’d been known to their world as Clifford’s daughter. Now she would become the king’s concubine. It was a prospect she found both daunting and humiliating, but it was a price she was willing to pay for her time with Henry.
“When do you plan to leave Chester?” she asked, and was proud of herself for making the query sound so casual, as if heartbreak was not riding upon his answer.
“Probably on Friday. My Curia Regis is scheduled to meet at month’s end.” He thought to translate the Latin into “Royal Court” for her benefit, but she scarcely noticed, for she was counting surreptitiously upon her fingers. Four days.
“Will you have time for me tonight?” she asked, still striving for nonchalance, and was reassured when he laughed and joked about staying in bed with her for the rest of his born days. She knew better, of course, but at least she’d have until Friday. That was more than many an unhappy wife had in an entire lifetime.
Sitting up, she began to untangle her hair with her fingers, feeling an almost childish delight when Henry tossed her his own brush. He was dressing with his usual dispatch, but when he smiled at her as he pulled a tunic over his head, she was encouraged to ask if he might grant her a favor.
Henry found himself fumbling with his belt, fighting back sudden suspicion. Had he so misjudged her? Was she Clifford’s accomplice, after all? He was accustomed to people wanting what a king could give, and women did their best bargaining in bed; that he well knew. But for reasons he did not fully understand, he did not want Rosamund Clifford to angle for her own advantage, to put a price upon her maidenhead. “What may I do for you?” he asked, his tone so neutral that a more worldly woman might have been warned.
Rosamund hesitated, hoping that he would not think her presumptuous. “I was wondering if… if when we are alone, I may call you Henry?”
Henry burst out laughing. “Well, no,” he said, and when he saw she’d taken his teasing seriously, he added hastily, “Actually I prefer Harry.”
She smiled, saying “Harry” with such ingenuous satisfaction that he had to return to the bed and kiss her. And when he left Chester at the week’s end, he took Rosamund with him.
In October, Eleanor gave birth at Angers to their seventh child, a fair-haired daughter who was named Joanna.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
December 1165
Angers, Anjou
In their thirteen years of marriage, Henry and Eleanor had often been apart, but they always spent Christmas together. Only war had separated them and only once. But now they were separated by more than miles. Eleanor did not understand why her husband was still in England. Nor did she approve. She had acted as his regent during his disastrous invasion of Wales, and that had been no easy task, for Thomas Becket’s defiance was a contagion, infecting the always contentious barons of Poitou, Anjou, and Maine. Small rebellions had been breaking out like brushfires all over Henry’s vast domains, fanned by agents of the French Crown and the House of Blois. Henry was needed on the Continent, where his enemies were plotting against him, where he had an infant daughter he’d yet to see and a wife who’d been sleeping alone for the past six months. Perplexed and aggrieved by his continuing absence, Eleanor finally voiced to intimates the question that was being asked by others, too, and with increasing frequency: What was keeping the king in England?
JUST AS SHE had not allowed pregnancy and childbirth to distract her from her duties as regent, Eleanor was determined to hold a Christmas Court as spectacular as any she and Henry had hosted in the past. God’s Year 1165 had not been a good one for Henry Fitz Empress-a humiliating defeat in Wales, the birth of a son to the French king, continuing discord with the exiled archbishop, Thomas Becket, echoes of rebellion on the bleak winter winds. But Eleanor had always been one for nailing her flag to the mast so it could not be struck down. She spared no expense and her guests would be marveling at the splendor of the royal revelries for months to come.
The great castle of Angers was hung with evergreen, holly, laurel, yew, and mistletoe. To enthusiastic cheers of “Wassail!” the Yule candle was lit and then the Yule log, carefully stacked so it might burn for the following twelve days. The Eve of Christmas was a fast day, but the Christmas Day feast was lavish enough to blot out all memories of Advent abstinence: a roasted boar’s head, refeathered peacocks, oysters, venison, and the delicacy known as a “glazed pilgrim,” a large pike which was boiled at the head, fried in the middle, and roasted at the tail. The entertainment was no less impressive than the menu: music by the finest minstrels in all of Aquitaine, dancing, a fire juggler, and then the presentation of the Play of the Three Shepherds. As bells pealed to celebrate the birth of the Christ Child, Eleanor’s Christmas Day revelry came to a successful conclusion, and if her spirits had been dampened by her husband’s absence, she alone knew it.
Christmas festivities traditionally ended on Twelfth Night. The January sky was canopied by clouds, and the evidence of an earlier snowfall still glazed the ground of the castle’s inner bailey. Colors of crimson and sun-gold glowed in the wavering torchlight, for most of the guests had not bothered to cover their fine clothes with mantles or cloaks. Warmed by wine and vanity, they’d trooped outdoors in good humor for the wassailing of the trees, only to discover that hippocras and the frothy cider drink called lamb’s wool were poor protection against a biting wind and air so icy it hurt to breathe.
Hurriedly, the revelers crowded into the garden, twelve of them forming a circle around the largest of the fruit trees. “Hail to thee, old apple tree,” they chanted hoarsely. “From every bough, give us apples enow.” The rest of the rhyme was all but drowned out by the chattering of teeth and the stamping of frigid feet. Cups were hastily lifted and muffled cries of “Wassail” filled the garden. There was more to the ceremony, but the guests were already hastening back toward the great hall. Pouring the remainder of their cider onto the exposed gnarled roots of the apple tree, the twelve wassailers scrambled to catch up with their retreating audience. Soon the garden was empty of all save a lone woman who’d had the foresight to wrap herself in a mantle lined with fox fur and a youth whose arm she had linked in hers.
The young Earl of Chester was sensibly garbed, too, enveloped in a green wool mantle that billowed like a sail with each swirl of the wind. He showed neither impatience to return to the hall nor curiosity why his mother should have chosen to linger in the dark, deserted garden, and it was that very apathy that Maud found so perplexing. Hugh’s abrupt arrival at Angers had taken her by surprise, for she had expected him to remain in England with their cousin the king. Whatever had possessed the lad to make a needless winter journey like this? So far he’d been as sparing with his answers as he was with his smiles, thwarting her maternal solicitude with shrugs and silence. Watching him as he brooded amongst the wassailers, as somber as if he were attending a wake, Maud had at last lost all patience.
“Are you going to tell me what is troubling you, Hugh, or must I guess?” He glanced at her sideways, with another of those vexing shrugs, and Maud’s frustration spilled over into the sort of blunt speaking that her more conventional son deplored. What sort of sins would he be most likely to commit? Gambling debts? Nay, he was too cautious to enjoy wagering. “Have you gotten some girl with child?”