The Revolt of the Eaglets Read Online Free

yet his father had murdered Thomas.
    Oh yes he had. Young Henry knew that everyone was thinking it even if they dared not say it. Four knights had struck the blows but the whole world would know on whose instructions.
    ‘It will be remembered against him,’ he mused. ‘The people will turn from him because of it. And to whom will they turn? Surely to the one whom he himself had crowned their King.’

    Eleanor Queen of England was content to be in her beloved city of Poitiers. This was the land she loved; the land of mild breezes, warm sun and song. It was here that the Courts of Love belonged; it had been impossible to transplant them in the colder climate of England with a people who had little patience with the laws of chivalry and dreams of ideal love. The king of that country was typical of the people he ruled, thought Eleanor scornfully – lusty, unimaginative, seeing something decadent in lying in the sun and making beautiful verses in honour of lovers.
    This was where she belonged and she never wanted to see England again. She might tell herself that she never wanted to see Henry also, but that was not true. He stimulated her as no one else could; he probed her emotions to their depth; she could never be truthfully aloof from him. Once she had loved him fiercely and now as fiercely she hated him.
    Often in her gardens she would be thinking of Henry when handsome troubadours strummed on their lutes and gazed at her with love and longing which must be feigned, for she was nearly fifty years of age and although she had been an exceptionally beautiful woman and still was, she had lived her life adventurously and time had left its mark on her. She remembered those early days when they had loved passionately and she had divorced Louis King of France in order to marry him. He had been as eager for the match as she was, but that may have been because she could bring him Aquitaine and he was a glutton for land. Sometimes she thought that he dreamed of conquering the whole world. Still if Aquitaine had been the main attraction he had hidden the fact and those early years of their marriage must have brought some of the satisfaction to him that they had brought to her. The strong physical attraction had been there – there was no doubt of it; but he, the lusty King, who all his life had taken what he wanted when he wanted it, had soon been unfaithful. She could laugh now at her fury when she had discovered it through the little Bastard Geoffrey he had brought into her nurseries.
    What a glorious battle there had been then and how she had enjoyed it; it had pleased her to see the rage which possessed him because in some way it weakened him. When his temper was out of control and he kicked inanimate objects, when he lay on the floor and rolled about in an agony of rage and tore the dirty rushes with his teeth, he betrayed himself. That magnificent power and strength which were normally his were lost somehow in the man who might control armies but was not in command of his own nature.
    She could not stop thinking of him and oddly enough her hatred of him absorbed her as once her love of him had done. Once she would have done everything in her power to advance him; now she would employ the same energy to destroying him.
    How she loved this city. Her city! And he, Henry, was Duke of Aquitaine, but he should not remain so. That title was for her beloved son Richard; and when Richard became Duke of Aquitaine he should be so in truth. Henry was quite content to bestow titles on his sons as long as it was understood that no power went with them. His was to be the governing hand, as young Henry – proud to be called a king – was realising.
    But it would not always be so. Already the people of Aquitaine were getting an inkling of the relationship between the King and the Queen; and there was no doubt where their loyalty lay. They demonstrated whenever she rode out that they regarded her as their Duchess and they would never submit to