Jean Plaidy - The Plantagenet Prelude

Richard rose from the table and ran to her. He knelt and kissed her hands.

‘Mother,’ he said, raising his beautiful eyes to hers.

‘My dearest boy,’ she answered, and her son Geoffrey was already clamouring for attention.

She thought: They love me. They truly love me. Is it like this when the King comes to their schoolroom?

Geoffrey the Bastard stood up and bowed stiffly. She looked past him as though she were unaware of his existence.

Another child had come into the room. This was Marguerite, the little French Princess, who was married to Henry and was now being brought up in the royal household.

Marguerite curtseyed to the Queen and greeted her in her pretty accent.

Eleanor drew them all about her and asked questions about their lessons. They answered eagerly, but Richard was the cleverest she noticed with satisfaction.

‘We are going to Aquitaine,’ she said. ‘That is my own country.’

‘Are we all going?’ asked Richard.

‘As yet I am unsure, but one thing I know. You, my son, will go with me.’

Richard laughed aloud to show his pleasure.

‘That pleases you, my boy?’ she asked ruffling his fair curly hair.

He nodded. ‘But if they had not let me go …’ They meant his father. ‘… I should have followed you.’

‘How would you have done that?’

‘I would have ridden to the sea and got into the boat and then I would have ridden on to Aquitaine.’

‘You will be an adventurer, my son.’

Then she told them about Aquitaine and how the troubadours came to the court and sang beautiful songs, for Aquitaine was the home of the troubadours.

‘Listen, Marguerite,’ commanded Richard. ‘Does not my mother tell beautiful stories? Is she not better than your old Becket?’

‘What is this talk of Becket?’ asked the Queen.

‘Marguerite always talks of him. She says that she and Henry cried when he went. Marguerite loved him … so did Henry. They said they loved him better than anyone, better than our father … better than you … That was wicked wasn’t it, my lady, for he is a wicked man.’

‘You listen to gossip,’ said the Queen. ‘You will not mention this man. He was wicked because he offended the King. That is an end of him.’

‘Is he dead?’ asked Richard, at which Marguerite burst into tears.

‘He is not dead,’ said the Queen to pacify Marguerite. ‘But he is not to be spoken of. Now I will sing you a song from Aquitaine and you will understand then how happy we shall be there.’

And there with Richard leaning against her knee and Geoffrey looking at her with wondering eyes, and Matilda and Marguerite sitting on their small stools at her feet, she thought, Here is my future, in these beautiful sons and particularly Richard. What care I for you, Henry Plantagenet, when I have my sons? I will bind them to me and they shall be truly mine. They will hate those who do not treat me well - even though that be you, King Henry.

When Eleanor left England the King was relieved. He decided now that he would live openly with Rosamund and brought her out of seclusion. She was a great solace to him but he was a worried man. He thought constantly of Thomas Becket, and try as he might he could not get the man out of his mind. Thomas would be living now in poverty in his monastery. Thomas who had loved luxury and needed comforts. Henry remembered how cold Thomas had been when the wind blew and how he had laughed at him for his weakness. But Thomas was by no means weak. He had a strong spirit and was of the stuff that martyrs are made.

There was not room for us both in England, thought Henry.

He could not long enjoy his solitude in England, peaceful as everything was there. Fresh trouble had broken out in Brittany which meant crossing the seas again. He said a fond farewell to Rosamund and left.

‘The fate of all our kings, since my ancestor William the Conqueror took this land and added it to his estates of Normandy,’ he mused.

In September news came to him that his mother, still known as the Empress Matilda, was grievously sick at Rouen; and before he could get to her side she was dead.

That saddened him. There had been affection between them, and she had loved him as dearly as she was capable of loving anyone. Now that she was dead he thought of all she had done for him; how, when she had known that the English crown could not be hers she had schemed for it to be his. He had been her favourite. His brothers - now both dead - had been nowhere with her.

In a way she reminded him of Eleanor - both strong women, both brought up with the idea that they would be rulers. It was a mistake to bring up women so. Matilda’s married life had been stormy from the start. At least he and Eleanor had started by loving each other.

As mothers he compared the two women. Eleanor seemed to be developing an obsession concerning that young cub Richard. And I never took to him - mine though he undoubtedly is. He’s his mother’s boy. Ready to defend her against any - including me. A fine sportsman. It did a man good to look at such a boy and know he was his son. But he could not like him - not as he could young Geoffrey, the whore’s son. Strange, he had begun by making much of the boy because Eleanor hated to have him in her nurseries, and it had grown from that. And Henry, his first-born since they had lost William, Henry was a fine boy. Charming and handsome. A son to be proud of. There was an estrangement between them now for the boy had been put under the tutelage of Becket, and the man had somehow weaned him from his natural affections and taken them himself. Thus when there had been a quarrel between Becket and the King, the boy would take the side of his tutor rather than his father.

Becket. It all came back to Becket.

The King had been thinking about his eldest son and some time before it had occurred to him that if young Henry were crowned King of England during his father’s lifetime there could be no doubt of the succession.

Some of his ministers thought that it would be unwise to have two crowned kings.

‘My own son!’ cried Henry. ‘What should I fear from him?’

True, young Henry was but a boy, but that would not always be so.

The more he thought of the idea the more he liked it. It would bind young Henry to him. Surely he would be grateful to a father who had done so much for him. Surely that would wean his allegiance from Becket.

Then again his ministers reminded him, it was a law that a king must be crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and as the Archbishop was in exile who could perform this important ceremony?

There was Roger, Archbishop of York and the King’s servant. But the Archbishop of York was not the Primate, though the king had done everything in his power to make him so.

In the privacy of his apartments he thought: What if I made my peace with Thomas? Then he could come back and crown young Henry. He had to admit that he wanted Thomas back. He wanted to renew the fight. He couldn’t help it. The man had been close to him. Young Henry mourned for Thomas and so in a way did his father.

Fortunately for Henry, Pope Alexander was a man of devious ways and when such a man was in difficulties, as Alexander undoubtedly was, it was not an insuperable task to make him agree to something which was outside his rights.

In a weak moment Alexander agreed that the coronation of young Henry should be performed by Roger, Archbishop of York.

Knowing that having been forced by Henry to make such a concession Alexander would immediately attempt to rescind it, Henry put preparations for the coronation into progress.

He sent word to Eleanor that Henry, who had joined her and the other children in Aquitaine, was to be brought to Caen with his wife, young Marguerite, and wait there until he sent for him.

Eleanor had written to the King telling him that Marguerite had declared that the coronation could be no coronation unless it was performed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and this so angered the King that when he sent for his son he commanded that he come alone. If Marguerite thought she must be crowned by her beloved Becket she should have no coronation at all.

Meanwhile messengers had arrived from the Pope who, afraid of what he had done, sent letters to cancel his previous promise.

Henry took the letters and promptly burned them. He gave the impression that he had not received them. He had the ports watched and all travellers searched so anxious was he that no edict should reach his bishops from the Pope. One however did get through. This was a nun who had been sent by Thomas and she carried a letter to Roger of York.

She arrived and found her way to Roger on the day before that fixed for the coronation. He read it. Thomas forbade him! The Pope forbade him! Roger had come to his present position through obeying the King, not Thomas and the Pope.

The day dawned and young Henry, aged sixteen and reckoned to be the most handsome prince in the world, was crowned by Roger de Pont l’Eveque as King of England.

The King watched with complacence.

He had yet again proved that he could do without an Archbishop of Canterbury, and he had secured the succession - so he believed.

He himself was thirty-seven years of age and constantly engaged in battle as he was he might meet his death at any time.

All was well. England would have a king to follow him, if by mischance he were to meet his end.

There was one who was not pleased by the coronation and that was the King of France. It was the custom for kings of France to have their eldest sons crowned before their deaths and so make a new king who could step right on to the throne when the old man died. But what of his daughter? Was she not the wife of young Henry? Why was she not crowned?