Plantagenet 1 - The Plantagenet Prelude Read Online Free Page B

summer?’
    ‘It would have been too easy a journey. It had to be hazardous that he might earn forgiveness for his sins.’
    ‘Had he so many?’
    Eleonore laughed. ‘He thought he had. He was obsessed by his sins, as our grandfather was.’
    ‘What about you, Eleonore? Have you committed any sins?’
    She shrugged her elegant shoulders. ‘I am too young to be concerned with sins. It is only when you are of an age to fear death that repentance is necessary.’
    ‘So we need not concern ourselves with repentance yet, sister. We may sin to our heart’s content.’
    ‘What a pleasant prospect,’ cried Eleonore.
    ‘Everyone in the castle respects you,’ said Petronelle adoringly. ‘I think they love you more than they did our father. But if he marries again and we have a brother …’
    Petronelle looked fearfully up at Eleonore who was scowling.
    ‘It won’t happen, sister,’ went on Petronelle quickly. ‘If he married he wouldn’t get a boy.’
    ‘It maddens me,’ cried Eleonore. ‘Why this reverence for the male sex? Are not women more beautiful, more subtle, often more clever than men?’
    ‘You are, Eleonore, cleverer than any man.’
    ‘Yet because they go into battle, because they have greater physical strength, they regard themselves so superior that a puny son would come before a fine daughter.’
    ‘No son our father got would ever equal you, Eleonore.’
    ‘Yet he must undertake this pilgrimage in the hope that Saint James will plead for him and he come safely back, marry and get a son.’
    ‘The saints will never listen to him. They will call him ungrateful. God has given him you, Eleonore, and he is not satisfied!’
    Eleonore laughed and blew a kiss to her sister.
    ‘At least you appreciate me,’ she said with a smile.
    She went to the narrow window and looked out on the bleak road.
    ‘One day,’ she said, ‘we shall see a party of horsemen on that road. It will either be my father coming back triumphant or …’
    ‘Or, what, Eleonore?’ asked Petronelle who had come to stand beside her.
    But Eleonore shook her head. She would say no more.
    It was but a few days later when a messenger did come to the castle.
    Eleonore, who had been warned that he was sighted, was in the courtyard to greet him; she herself held the cup of hot wine for him.
    ‘I bring ill tidings, my lady,’ he said before he would take the cup. ‘The Duke is dead. The journey was too much for him. I have a sorry tale to tell.’
    ‘Drink,’ said Eleonore. ‘Then come into the castle.’
    She took him into the hall and sat with him beside the fire. She ordered that food be brought to him, for he had ridden far and was exhausted. But first she must hear the news.
    ‘He suffered towards the end, my lady, but never wavered from his purpose. We carried him right to the shrine and that made him happy. He died there in his litter but not before he had received the blessing. It was his wish that he be buried before the main altar in the Church of Saint James.’
    ‘And this was done?’
    ‘It was done, my lady.’
    ‘Praise be to God that he died in peace.’
    ‘His one concern was for your welfare.’
    ‘Then he will be happy in Heaven for when he looks down on me he will know I can take care of myself.’
    ‘Before he died he received an assurance from the King of France, my lady.’
    Eleonore lowered her eyes.
    There would be a wedding. Her own. And to the son of the King of France. Louis the Fat would not have been so eager to ally his son with her had she not been the heiress of Aquitaine.
    How could she grieve? How could she mourn? Her father, who had planned to get an heir who would displace her, was no more. His plans were as nothing.
    There was one heir to Aquitaine. It was Duchess Eleonore.

    Young Louis was very apprehensive. He was to travel to Aquitaine, there to present himself to his bride and ask her hand in marriage. That was a formality. His father and hers had already decided that there should