Thus they set out on their journey.

They called first at the Abbey of Fontevraud where the Queen Mother received them.

She was enchanted by Isabella. She saw in her son’s young bride something of what she had been so many years ago. A freshness, a youthful outlook on life and that overpowering sensuality which was at the very root of the secret of her power to move John so deeply.

The young girl made Eleanor feel her age more acutely. The journey to Castile had been too much for her and she had been glad to get back to Fontevraud where she could daily visit the graves of her husband, her son Richard and her daughter Joanna.

‘My life is over,’ she told Isabella. ‘Sometimes one can live too long. Perhaps the fates would have been kinder to me if they had taken me when Richard died.’

There were some pleasures left to her, though. Thinking over the past was one; and sometimes she could throw herself back so clearly that everything became as vivid as though it were happening at that moment.

‘Live fully, child,’ she said, ‘that is the secret of it. I used my time … every minute of it; and now I can look back and remember. There were years when I was imprisoned and even then I made the most of every hour.’

She thought a great deal about John and was uneasy doing so. She knew him well and she felt that it had been the greatest tragedy that Richard had died when he did. How ironical it was that, just as he had come home from the Holy Land and had been released from his incarceration at Dürenstein, that wicked man had shot an arrow at him that had killed him, so that there was only John.

She knew what John had done. He had taken Isabella from Hugh de Lusignan by a trick, for they would never have let Isabella go if they had known she was going to the King. Did John think that that would be forgotten? There would be retribution, she knew. Was John, uxorious, living in a state of euphoria, thinking only of bed and Isabella, unable to realise what a storm his actions might well have aroused, or was he simply ignoring this? The Lusignans would be against him. He might have gained the Count of Angoulême as an ally but that was not much of a gain to be set beside the enmity of the Lusignans. What of the King of Portugal nursing his wounded dignity? And there were Arthur and his mother with her new husband Guy de Thouars, just waiting for a chance to rise. And more important than all, Philip of France. What was he thinking at this moment? Laughing no doubt to think how recklessly John was gambling with a kingdom.

But I am too old to concern myself, thought Eleanor. My day is done. And what could I do in any case? I could warn John. As if he would listen! He hears nothing but the laughter of that child of his; he sees nothing but her inviting person and he cannot see the jeopardy in which he has placed himself while he is bemused by dreams of new ways of making love.

She could warn the girl perhaps. Voluptuous she certainly was, and knowledgeable with a knowledge such as her kind were born with. Eleanor knew, for she had been like that herself. But what did Isabella know of the world outside the boudoir?

‘The King is deeply enamoured of you now, but it may well be that he will not always be so,’ Eleanor warned her.

Isabella looked startled. She could not believe that anyone would fail to be in love with her.

‘Men like change, my dear,’ said the Queen.

‘You mean John will no longer love me?’

‘I did not say that. He will always see in you the beauty that you have; it is a beauty which is always there. Age cannot destroy it. You have that sort of beauty, Isabella. I will dispense with false modesty and tell you that I have it. When I married John’s father he was enamoured of me. It was an unsuitable match in many ways. The reverse of you and John, I was his senior by some twelve years. That did not stop us. We were lovers … even as you are now. But scarcely had the first year of our marriage passed when another woman was carrying his child.’

Isabella drew back in horror.

‘’Twas so. I did not discover it until he brought her child into my nurseries. I never forgave him, and that set up a canker in our hearts … both of us. Our love turned to hate. Now had I been wiser I might have said to myself: It is the way of men. He must go forth to his battles and we were parted, and so he took his women. Had I realised that his dallying with the light women he met on his journeys did not alter what he felt for me, we would not have been such bitter enemies. Perhaps then our children would not have learned to hate him and fight against him. I think a great deal about this now I am old. I go down to his grave and talk to him as though he were there. I go over our life together and say to myself: Ah, had I done this … or that … we might have gone in different directions. We might have been friends instead of enemies, for there was always something between us. Often we called it hate but with people such as we are, love is near to hate. Ah, I see I tire you. You are asking yourself what this old woman is talking about. Why, you say, does she tell me this? Have I not a husband who adores me, who thinks me the most perfect being in the world? Has he not said he possesses all he could desire? Yes, so it was with Henry and with me in the beginning. My child, what shall you do if John betrays you with other women?’

She thought a while then her beautiful eyes narrowed. Then she said very deliberately: ‘I shall betray him with other men.’

Eleanor said gently: ‘I trust it may never come to pass.’


How excited Isabella was to see the sea! She wanted to run into it and catch it with her hands.

She stood gazing at it in wonder. John watched her indulgently.

‘Such a lot I have to show you, my love,’ he said.

They went on board their ship and he found it hard to draw her away from the deck, so enthralled was she. She was excited beyond words when she beheld the white cliffs of her new kingdom.

‘You shall be crowned ere long,’ John told her. ‘The most beautiful queen England has ever known.’

He was excited to be in England which always seemed more home to him than any other land. England had accepted him when some of those who lived in his overseas dominions had been prepared to take Arthur. It was because England would never have accepted Arthur that men such as William Marshal had come down in his favour. So he owed a lot to England; and now he was going to honour that land by giving it the most beautiful woman in the world to be its queen.

He called together a council at Westminster and there, glowing with pride, he presented Isabella to them. They could not but be moved by such charm and beauty and the unfortunate affair of the Portuguese embassy seemed to have been forgotten, as was the manner of his snatching Isabella from the man to whom she was betrothed. After all, the troubles of Hugh de Lusignan were scarcely something for the English to worry about.

There would be a coronation for the Queen and the people loved a coronation. They had wondered why the King’s previous wife had not been crowned with him. There had been rumours then that he was thinking of casting her off. They might have been sorry for her, but here was a new bride and there would be rejoicing in the streets, dancing, bonfires and perhaps free wine. Therefore, it was a matter for rejoicing; and when the people saw the exquisite child who was to be their new queen, they were enchanted by her. The cheers for Isabella resounded through the city.

Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury, came to Westminster to perform the ceremony. The King had given orders that the Abbey was to be strewn with fresh herbs and rushes on the great day and a certain Clarence FitzWilliam received thirty-three shillings for doing this. There was one chorister whose voice was considered the most beautiful heard for many a year. He was known as Ambrose and the King ordered that he should be given twenty-five shillings to sing Christus vicit.

John wanted his people to know that this coronation was as important to him as his own had been. He wanted the whole country to welcome Isabella, to see her in all her youth and beauty and to applaud their king for possessing himself of such a prize.

They were willing and so Isabella, amid great rejoicing, was crowned Queen of England.

No one could doubt John’s joy in his queen and his determination to honour her.


They were happy – John and Isabella. She continued to delight him; he was sure he would never tire of her, nor look at another woman only to compare her with Isabella to her great disadvantage. Isabella was supreme, with her child’s body and the deep sensual appetites of an experienced woman, and he thought little of anything but the times when they could be alone together. As for Isabella, everything that happened was so new to her; and apart from her sensuality she was an inexperienced child of twelve. Novelty delighted her and she had plenty of that; to be the centre of an admiring circle was not new to her but it never failed to delight her; and to find that English strangers were as surely delighted with her as the people of Angoulême was a delicious discovery. Sometimes she thought of poor Hugh the Brown and she wondered if he were very sad. She hoped so for she could not bear him to forget her. Sometimes she thought of what it would have been like if she had married him. How different he would have been from John. Hugh was very handsome and he had never understood what she was really like as John had from the moment they met. Something within her still hankered after Hugh, but life was too exciting for brooding. She loved her golden crown and the homage of the people. The coronation had delighted her. She could have endured a great deal to win the title of Isabella the Queen, so she enjoyed travelling through the country with John which they did immediately after her coronation.