Jean Plaidy - The Plantagenet Prelude

He was glad that Eleanor realised he had no intention of being faithful to her, that he was going to live like a king taking his pleasure where he would and that all his subjects - be they his Queen or his most humble serving-man - must realise that this was the King’s way and none should dare question it.

He could never rest anywhere for long. When he was in the South he must wonder what the people of the North were doing. He had made a habit of travelling about the country without warning which way he was going. This meant that everywhere they must be prepared for him to descend on them at any moment and woe betide any of them who were not carrying out his orders. This habit was applauded by the ordinary people, who had seen the immediate effect it had had on law and order. No robber baron now dared to carry out his cruel tricks. The King would hear of it and his word was law.

England rejoiced. It had a strong king again. Henry was determined to keep his country rejoicing.

With great glee he had discovered that Eleanor was pregnant again. She had deplored the fact.

‘What am I then?’ she demanded. ‘An animal whose sole purpose in life is to breed?’

‘It is the fate of women,’ retorted Henry with a smirk.

‘I tell you this. I shall have a long rest after this one.’

‘Three boys would be a fair tally,’ he conceded.

She hated to see him there - younger than she was, full of health and vigour, off on his travels again, looking for young and beautiful girls who would think it an honour to be seduced by the King and if a child resulted from their dalliance, well, who knew the King might allow it to be brought up in the royal nursery. Hadn’t he taken the harlot’s Geoffrey and done just that?

She hated him for being free and young.

It was like him to rise early in the morning and only then let it be known that he was ready to start on his peregrinations. What a bustle there was in the castle! Servants would hastily rise from their beds and the grooms, bleary-eyed, would hurry to the stables. The horses themselves, catching the mood, would grow frisky; the cooks and stewards and all the members of the domestic household who travelled with the King quickly gathered together the tools of their trades, for the King was on the move and he was impatient with delay.

Eleanor watched from her window. They feared him; yet there was not one of them who would wish to be left behind. His terrible rages made them tremble, but his rough words of friendship enraptured them.

She had to admit grudgingly that he was indeed a king. There he was bawling instructions while they ran frantically round him. There was his bed being taken out. Who would share that with him? she wondered angrily. Fresh straw in case it could not be procured on the way. His platters and his drinking cups. There would not be any great banquets, she thought ruefully. His pleasure lay in the bed rather than the table.

He looked up and saw her at the window. He bowed ironically. No regrets now as there used to be in the old days. Then she would have been down there. She would have begged him to return quickly, to think of her as she would of him. That was changed. She knew him better. He had betrayed himself as the lecher he was. He could not even be faithful in the days when they had been at the height of their passion.

Let him go to his whores and harlots. She was glad to be rid of him.

And he had dared dismiss Bernard de Ventadour. Why? Had he really been jealous as he had pretended to be? There was much that she did not understand about him. Perhaps that was why she could not stop thinking of him.

And now here she was - she, Eleanor of Aquitaine, the elegant lady of good taste and culture, the patron of arts, a woman who must await the pleasure of the King’s visits to her bed, which she was beginning to suspect were for the sole purpose of getting children. Was this the romance of which her poets had sung?

There was consolation in her children, and particularly Richard.

He was a wonderful boy and very soon there would be another. It was not a year since his birth and here she was heavy with a child again.

She took Richard in her arms and put his smooth young face against her own.

‘The King has gone, Richard,’ she said.

The child crowed with delight as though he understood.

She laughed aloud and hugged him tightly. In this fine boy she could forget her disillusion with her husband.

Henry made his way to Shropshire. On his accession he had ordered the demolition of any castle which had been erected as a stronghold from which the pillaging of the countryside took place. This had aroused the enmity of many of those who had owned these castles and Henry knew that if he did not continue to have the country patrolled either by himself or his trusted friends these castles would be erected again.

He had heard that this was what was happening in the area of Shropshire and the news had been sent to him by a certain Sir Walter Clifford who himself was having a disagreement with the son of one of the chieftains of Wales.

Henry therefore decided that he would make for Sir Walter’s castle in Shropshire and settle this dispute.

When he arrived at the castle he was welcomed by Sir Walter who according to custom came into the courtyard to present him with the traditional goblet of wine, which he himself first tasted to assure the King that it contained no poison, and he himself held the stirrup while the King dismounted.

Then he led the King into the castle hall where the Clifford family were waiting to welcome him. He must forgive their awkwardness, whispered Sir Walter. They were overawed at the prospect of having the King under their roof.

There was the Clifford family, Lady Clifford and her daughters - six of them. Some were married and their husbands stood behind them, but the youngest of them took the King’s eyes for she seemed to him the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.

He paused before her and said, ‘You have a lovely daughter, Sir Walter.’

‘She will remember your royal compliment all her life, my lord.’

‘Nor shall I forget such beauty in a hurry. What are you called, maiden?’

‘Rosamund, Sire.’

‘Rosamund,’ he mused. ‘The Rose of the World, eh?’ Then he passed on, and was conducted to the bedchamber which was hastily being prepared for him.

All the cooks in the castle were set to work for even though the King’s eating habits were well known, every one of his hosts would want to produce the best feast of which they were capable. The King would expect it even though he did not wish to over-eat. Every acknowledgement of the honour done to them must be clearly shown.

A banquet was prepared and carried into the great hall. Sir Walter gave up the head of the table to his royal guest as he had done his bedchamber for only the best in the house was good enough for the King. For once Henry sat down to eat and he was in a more thoughtful mood than was usual. He commanded that Sir Walter’s daughter should sit beside him at the table.

She came. He was struck further by the beauty of her fair complexion, and realised he was comparing it with Eleanor’s darker one. This girl was indeed rose-like, a little fearful to have caught his interest - which he liked in her - and yet eager to please.

‘Why,’ said Henry fondly, ‘I never saw a maiden whose looks please me more.’

He took her slender white hand and held it in his for a while and then he laid out his own beside hers and laughed comparing them.

‘There you see a hand, my child, that holds the strings that lead a nation. A strong hand, Rose of the World, but not so pretty a one as yours, eh?’

‘It would not be right, Sire, for your hand to be other than it is.’

‘The right answer,’ he cried. ‘You should always think thus of your King. He is right … whatever he is. Is that what you think, my Rose?’

‘Yes, Sire. ‘Tis true, is it not?’

‘Your daughter pleases me,’ said the King to Sir Walter. ‘She hath a rare grace and beauty.’

He kept the girl with him during the evening and when night fell he said to her: ‘Hast ever had a lover, maiden?’

She blushed charmingly and said she had not.

‘Then this night you shall have one and he shall be the King.’

He stayed at the castle. Rosamund was enchanting. She had been a virgin but her father had been willing that she should be given to the King. Nor had Rosamund been reluctant; she must rejoice that the King had found her to his liking.

Sir Walter soothed his wife who would have wished their daughter to have been found a husband that she might settle down in respectable matrimony as her sisters had done.

‘Nay,’ said Sir Walter, ‘Rosamund will bring good to herself and the family. And if there should be a child, the King will care for it. To refuse our daughter to the King would anger him. They say his rages are terrible.’

‘We should have hidden our daughters.’

‘Nay, wife. Fret not. Naught but good will come of this.’

Rosamund was in love with the King. That aura of power had completely bemused her. She was an innocent girl and fearful that she lacked skills to please him, but he told her that her very innocence was at the root of her charm for him.

He found it difficult to tear himself away. He said: ‘I shall always remember my stay at your father’s castle.’

‘I shall remember it too,’ she answered.