The Courts of Love - Jean Plaidy [106]
“Yet her bastard . . .”
“Is mine also. I care about the boy.”
“How do you know this child is yours?”
“I know.”
“Men can be fooled, you understand.”
“I understand that in him I am not mistaken. He will arrive tomorrow. He is to be treated as the others.”
I was speechless with rage—not so much by the prospect of having the child in the nursery as that almost immediately after our marriage he had been unfaithful to me.
He went on: “He will be brought here and he will come straight to the nursery. He is a pleasant child.”
“Are we to have a succession of your bastards invading the nurseries?”
“It is only this one whom I wish to have here at the present.”
“What a lecher you are! I suppose when you are with your armies you take any woman you like as you pass through the towns. You sport with the camp-followers.”
“It is the way of men on the march. And I am surprised that you are surprised it should be so. I believe you had certain adventures when you were on the march. I have heard some spicy scandals about you and your uncle. I always went outside the family.”
“How dare you speak to me thus.”
“I speak as I will to you, as to any of my subjects.”
I had been a fool. I should have known. I remembered the days when we had first met and that immediate attraction between us. It had been nothing but what might have happened with a tavern wench. I felt humiliated and angry with myself.
I said: “I married you when you were a mere duke, Duke of Normandy, and hard pressed to keep the title.”
“That is past. Now I am King of England.”
“And I am the Queen and Duchess of Aquitaine.”
“Queen because I made you so, remember?”
“You are insulting me by bringing this child into the nursery.”
“As I see it, I am doing my duty by him.”
“Could you not put him into some nobleman’s household?”
“I want him to be in mine.”
“And you will disrupt your family to do this?”
“I command that he be brought up here and that there shall be no prejudice against him.”
I felt beaten. I knew him well by now. I could imagine those journeys of his, the nights he spent with women . . . any woman who happened to be available. Why had I thought it could be otherwise with such a man? He was lusty and licentious; this was the life he had led before his marriage and he saw no reason to discontinue it. This was how it had always been. I had to get used to it.
I turned away from him but he caught my arm and pulled me around to face him.
“Have done with fancy songs from fancy troubadours,” he said. “Face the real world. Men will be men and if the woman they would have is not there they will take another. It is always so with such as I am and always will be. You must needs face the truth.”
“You have been trying to tell me this for a long time. You wanted this boy brought in. You were going to ask me to take him in. You have been steeling yourself to do it. Then you decided on this arrogance . . . this insistence.”
“My dear Eleanor, you are too clever by half.”
Then he laughed and held me against him. He was knowledgeable about women—having had so much experience of them, I supposed. He thought that if he made love to me, made me believe that I was still more desirable to him than anyone else, he could bend me to his command. But my feelings had changed toward him. I wrenched myself free and left him.
The boy came. There was no doubt that he was Henry’s—the tawny hair and eyes, the confident manner; he was the lion’s cub. He was a pleasant creature. Young Henry took to him right away. Matilda liked him. He quickly became a favorite in the nursery.
September 8 of that year 1157 was a day I have often thought of as the happiest in my life because on it my son Richard was born. He was beautiful from the moment he appeared. Not for him that period which most little babies go through when they look like old men of ninety. He was fair-haired and blue-eyed with a skin like milk and pale pink roses. I loved him dearly from the moment I saw him, and for the rest of his life he became the most important person in mine.
It may have been not only because