When I looked at him, with his square, thick-set figure made for agility rather than grace, his bow legs, his wide, thick feet, his close-cropped sandy-colored hair, his bullet-shaped head and his rough red hands, I marveled that I, who had been brought up in the most elegant of Courts, could have this feeling for him. His eyes were gray and rather prominent but they were quite beautiful in repose; but I was to see them raging in fury, and then they had quite a different aspect.

He was different from anyone I had ever known. He conformed to no pattern. He hardly ever sat still. He would wander about a room as he talked; there was no refinement in his speech; he never couched his expression in soft words; what he meant to convey came out bluntly, right to the point. He did not care to sit and eat in a civilized manner. He seemed to think it a waste of time. Food did not greatly interest him. It was something one must take for nourishment, and that was all it meant to him. I did not then ask myself why he had captivated me; during those two weeks when we were together every minute of the night and day I was obsessed by him.

He was well educated—his parents had taken care of that—and he was fond of learning. He had read a great deal, which amazed me in one so active. But as long as he was doing something which seemed to him worthwhile he was contented; and reading must have seemed that.

He had little admiration for poets and minstrels and regarded them with a certain contempt. When I look back, it seems to me that, if I could have chosen someone as completely different from myself as possible, I might have chosen Henry.

How we talked during those blissful days. He told me a great deal about his parents. There was no doubt that he had a great affection and admiration for his mother, the forceful Empress Matilda. He was proud of her although she did fail so dismally to regain her kingdom.

“It was hers by right,” he said. “Was she not the daughter of the King? Stephen had no right to take England from her. She should have been Queen.”

“I should have thought the people would have rallied to her,” I replied. “Was it because she was a woman that they turned to Stephen?”

“No. Stephen is as weak as water ... but he has charm. He is affable. He is approachable. He smiles on them and they like him, in spite of the fact that he is ruining their country. Matilda ... well, she is a haughty woman. She cannot forget that she was Empress of Germany. The English do not like her manner.”

“Did she not see that she was spoiling her chances?”

“My mother is not a woman to take advice. Her life has not been easy. She was five years old when she was sent to Germany to marry the Emperor. He was thirty years older than she. There she was made much of, spoiled for discipline forevermore: She was unprepared for what was to follow; and when he died and she was brought home, she was twenty-three years old. She clung to the title of Empress—indeed, she still calls herself Empress now and insists that others do. She is a very forceful woman, my mother; and when at the age of twenty-five she was married to my father, she considered him far beneath her. She was ten years older than he, and she despised the boy of fifteen who was descended from the Counts of Anjou—who in their turn were descended from the Devil. Imagine it. Poor Mother.”

“Since she is so forceful, the daughter of a King and the widow of an Emperor, I wonder she did not refuse to marry him.”

“Her father was even more forceful. Matilda wanted the throne, so she was obliged to submit. For years she would have little to do with my father. She despised him and let him know it. Then after about six years she decided to do her duty and I was born. A year after me there was Geoffrey and after him William. So at length she produced the three of us.”

“You are fond of her and were fond of your father too.”

“They both did their best for me, but we boys were brought up in a Court where there was continual strife. I have never known two people to hate each other as they did.”

“Perhaps it has made you strong.”

In turn I told him of my childhood, of those first five years spent in my grandfather’s Court. I told of the jongleurs and their songs which enlivened the long evenings while the fires glowed and the light was dim. I told him of my bold grandfather and Dangerosa, and the miracle which Bernard had conjured up to show my father the error of his ways.

He told me of the beautiful woman who had wandered into his ancestor’s castle and so charmed him that he married her, and how sons were born to her, how she always made excuses why she could not go to church and one day when she was prevailed upon to do so, she was confronted by the Host and suddenly disappeared and was never seen again.

“This is the story which gives rise to the legend,” he said. “They say the woman came from Satan and that we Angevins are the spawn of the Devil.”

“Am I to believe that?”

“You will discover,” he replied.

They were wonderful days which I wanted to go on forever, but of course they could not. He was restless; he had lands to conquer. I should have to wait for these periods when we could be together. I told myself that they would be the more precious because I had to wait for them.

Henry had placed people all over France and England. He said that if one was going to take the right action one must know what the enemy planned. He must have as much information as possible. It was from one of his men that we heard about the reaction to our marriage at the French Court.

Louis had rarely been so startled.

How blind he was! He had seen me with Henry. Had he not noticed that overwhelming attraction between us? Of course he had not. What did Louis know of such emotion?

He was incensed. He and I had been divorced because of the closeness of our relationship and I had immediately married someone who was even closer. It was a blatant disregard for decency, the Church and the crown of France. Why, when it had been suggested that my elder daughter should marry Henry Plantagenet, this had been rejected because of the closeness of their blood, and now I, the mother, had the effrontery to marry the man myself.

The marriage must be dissolved at once.

Henry and I laughed at the idea. In our eyes, we were ideally suited and nothing on Earth was going to separate us.

We heard that, shocked beyond measure by this “incestuous union,” many of the French nobles were assembling at Court. Naturally, rejected suitors such as Geoffrey of Blois and Geoffrey Plantagenet raged in their indignation—although why the latter should complain of the blood tie between his brother and me when he was ready to commit the incestuous sin himself needs a little explanation.

The fact remained that they were gathering against Henry.

A messenger arrived at Poitiers. As Louis’s vassals, Henry and I were to present ourselves to him to answer the charges against us.

Henry snapped his fingers at that. “Louis will have to stop thinking of me as a vassal,” he said.

But when he had news from his spies that Louis was planning an attack, he was alert. He was not sure where the attack would come from. Aquitaine would be faithful, we knew; but Normandy was less secure. His brother Geoffrey was a traitor and there was nothing he would like better than to see Normandy wrested from Henry, of whom he had always been intensely jealous.

“I must go to Normandy without delay,” said Henry. “You will be able to hold Aquitaine.”

I knew he was right. The honeymoon was over.

This was the kind of life to which I must become accustomed. I must not complain. Now it was my task and great desire to prove to him that he really could rely on me in all things.

So we said goodbye and Henry rode away. I must fortify my castle and make my people aware of the French threat.

They were loyal to me—the more so because Henry was not here. They made it clear that they would fight for me, their Duchess, for I was their ruler, but they did not owe the loyalty to my consort that they owed to me.

I accepted that. In a way I was pleased by it. I had learned enough of Henry to know that he considered himself the master of all about him, and that included me. That was something I should have to teach him was not the case. I would do it gently, of course, but no man, not even Henry, was going to subdue me.

In our passionate moments he had murmured that he had never known a woman like me. He would have to remember that. No matter what power he had had over members of my sex in the past, no matter if it was the way of the world that men should rule, it should not happen with Eleanor of Aquitaine.

So in my fortress I waited while a watch was kept for the approach of the French.

Nothing happened. I knew Louis’s reluctance to go to war and I am sure that a war against me would have an even greater repugnance for him. I heard he had turned his forces toward Normandy and there was no sign of hostility toward Aquitaine.

I thought a great deal about Louis’s campaigns. Had there ever been one which was successful? It was hard to remember. Poor Louis, doomed to failure. What hope had he against a shrewd strategist like Henry?

News came of the progress of the battle. Henry was winning everywhere. I was amused to hear that his truculent little brother Geoffrey had now lost the three castles which had been left to him and caused such a grievance.

It was not long before Louis and his pathetic attempts at war were completely routed. Henry was victorious: Normandy was safe; and Henry returned to Poitou.