The Courts of Love - Jean Plaidy [82]
“That is just what they will say, and they will be wrong with their ‘possibly England.’ It is going to be ‘certainly England.’”
“Of course.”
“I care not two bad pears for what Louis thinks.”
“Nor I. So why do we concern ourselves with him?”
“We shall not, though he could stop us if he tried. It’s this matter of suzerainty. So let us get the deed over with . . . quickly. That is my wish. Is it yours?”
“It is. Oh yes, it is.”
“Then so shall it be. We do not want a grand ceremony. I should not in any case. I hate prancing about in fancy costume like a play-actor. You will have to take me rough like this.”
“I’ll take you as you are,” I said.
“And you, my love, will have to be the elegant lady . . . but you are that without effort so I will accept it.”
And so we talked and planned; and on that May day of the year 1152 in my native city, without the pomp and ceremony which is usually such an important part of the proceedings when people like Henry and myself are united, we were married.
It was a wonderful day—less than two months after the divorce for which I had so craved—and I was happy.
We had a little respite before we should be caught up in what must inevitably follow. They were exciting days which passed all too quickly. I had been carried away by the magnetic and overwhelming personality of this man; I had thought of little else but him since I had first seen him. I knew he was a great man, and my instinct told me that his life would be eventful and triumphant. I had known soon after I saw him that, above all things, I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him.
During those days I began to learn something of the man beneath the faade, and gradually the true Henry began to emerge.
Henry’s Wife
THE TWO WEEKS WHICH followed my wedding were the most exciting, surprising and revealing I had ever known. I was idyllically happy. I had the man I wanted. But it became clear to me during the days after our wedding that I had a great deal to learn about my husband. When there is such an all-consuming physical passion as there was with Henry and myself, although one seems to grasp in an instant that there is complete sexual harmony, one can be quite ignorant about the person involved. Blinded by physical demands, one ignores characteristics which would be obvious in others.
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