She once told Dame Amaria, the loyal maid who’d shared her long captivity, that she and Henry did not often make mistakes, but when they did, they tended to be spectacular. She had sixteen years to ponder hers, and during those long, difficult years shut away from the world, she developed a skill that neither her husband nor her sons had ever cultivated—the art of introspection. She also learned to live with her regrets, and that gave her the resilience to survive the tragedies she could not prevent.
Their golden boy, Hal, the young king, died in yet another rebellion against his father. Among Henry and Eleanor’s failings as parents, they’d had obvious favorites—for Henry, it was Hal and then his youngest, John, and for Eleanor, it was always Richard. Geoffrey had been the forgotten son, and had been driven to rebellion by his father’s failure to see that he and Richard were very different men from the feckless, charming, and irresponsible Hal. Geoffrey met a meaningless death in a tournament at the court of his new ally, the young French king, Philippe, who would prove to be as unlike Louis as granite and sand. Henry drove Richard away next, refusing to acknowledge him as the heir, thinking that would give him leverage over this strong-willed, fiery son. He succeeded only in convincing Richard that Henry meant to disinherit him in favor of John, and so he, too, traveled the same road as his brothers—to the French court. By then Henry was ailing, aging, and did not want to fight his son. But he was too proud to give Richard what he demanded—official recognition—and a life of brilliant triumphs would end in bitter tragedy. He died at Chinon Castle after making a humiliating surrender to Richard and Philippe, few doubting that the death blow had been the news that his beloved son John, for whom he’d sacrificed so much, had betrayed him.
Richard’s first command as king was to free his mother from her confinement at Salisbury Castle. She was to be obeyed, he directed, in all matters, and so it was. Thus began perhaps the most satisfying time of Eleanor’s life, for she was no longer a bird with clipped wings. She and Richard shared what Henry had so desperately wanted from his sons and never gotten: complete and utter trust. Her son was willing to do what Henry would not—make use of her formidable talents, the political instincts that had been sharply honed after more than fifty years on history’s stage. Immediately upon Richard’s accession to the throne, he prepared to honor his vow to free Jerusalem from the Saracens. It had been three years since he’d seen the white cliffs of Dover receding into the distance, confident that he could rely upon his mother to keep his kingdom at peace until his return.
Now in her sixty-ninth year, Eleanor was resisting aging as fiercely as she’d once fought against convention. After making a winter crossing of the Alps to deliver Richard’s bride to him in Sicily, she’d returned to England to mediate between his volatile half brother Geoff, the reluctant Archbishop of York, and his unpopular chancellor, the clever, crippled, and prideful Bishop of Ely, Guillaume de Longchamp, and to keep a close eye upon his younger brother John, the Count of Mortain and a willing pawn of the French king. Eleanor had few good memories of England and yearned for the warmth and sophisticated splendor of her favorite city, Poitiers. She was determined, though, to remain on this accursed, rain-soaked isle until Richard returned from the Holy Land. As the weeks turned into months, other crusaders arrived home, most of them eager to relate tales of her son’s bravura exploits on the battlefields of Outremer. But of Richard, there was no word, only an ominous, suffocating silence.
THE CHAPEL OF ST JOHN THE EVANGELIST was the reason that Eleanor preferred to stay at the Tower of London rather than the royal palace at Westminster. The top floor of the keep was split into two large rooms, a great hall and a spacious bedchamber that offered a private entrance into the chapel. On nights when sleep would not come, Eleanor could wrap herself in a fur-lined cloak and slip silently into the oratory to be alone with God and her own thoughts. In her long life, she’d endured many a wretched Christmas—some as the bored, unhappy wife of the French king, many more as Henry’s prisoner, unsure that she’d ever regain her freedom. But none had been as miserable as this past one, presiding over her Christmas Court with a composed demeanor and a brittle smile, daring one and all to believe the vile rumors her own son was spreading: that Richard was dead.