The Revolt of the Eaglets Read Online Free Page A

the fiery arrogant Angevin who regarded himself as the conqueror of Europe. No, they loved their Duchess Eleanor, the lady of song and learning, the adventurous Queen whose conduct had often scandalised the world, but even these scandals had only endeared her to her own people of the South.
    Often she went up to the ramparts of the castle and surveyed with pride and emotion the city below her. She would gaze at the beautiful Notre Dame la Grande, and the baptistery of Saint Jean and feel young again. She remembered too when the magnificent Cathedral of Saint Pierre had been built. There were so many memories here of other days; and looking back did she regret the passing of her youth?
    How could she, when the years had brought her her beloved sons? And chief of these was Richard.
    She had always loved beauty in the human form and in her eyes her son was her ideal. Some might say he lacked the regular-featured handsome good looks of his elder brother Henry, but the strength of his character showed in his face, and although Eleanor loved all her children and determined to bind them to her, Richard was the one who had the cream of her devotion.
    Richard was tall, his limbs were long and he was noted for the long reach of his arms. His hair was neither red nor yellow but of a colour in between, and his eyes were blue. From an early age he had shown great daring and such a strength of purpose that once he had made up his mind to complete a task he never swerved until it was done. In horsemanship, archery and all other sports he excelled, and what so enchanted the Queen was that he was equally skilled in verse making; he could sing and play the lute with the best of her troubadours. Now that she felt this fierce hatred for her husband she concentrated her love on her children and Richard especially.
    He returned her love. To her he confided his ambitions. He enjoyed hearing of her adventures in the Holy Land and she loved to tell them, dramatising them, setting them to verse and glorifying them by song. They were romanticised and made enchanting stories and she and the lovers she had taken during that wild adventure were the heroine and heroes of a story as entertaining and romantic as that of Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot.
    ‘Oh what a beautiful city this is,’ she would say. ‘My city that shall be yours, Richard. This city on a hill. Did you know that Marcus Aurelius built an amphitheatre here to hold twenty-two thousand spectators? The Saracens were routed here when they swept across France. Standing here on these ramparts you can sense it all, can you not?’
    And Richard would understand as once she had thought his father would have done. For in the early days of their marriage Henry had loved literature and works of the imagination. But he had coarsened; his love of power and his lechery had done that.
    ‘When he enters a town,’ said Eleanor to her sons, ‘he does not see the magnificent facade of a cathedral; he does not hear the melodious ring of bells. He looks over the women and decides which he shall take to his bed to make sport with, not caring whether she be willing or not.’
    ‘Let us hope he does not come to Poitiers,’ said Richard.
    ‘We will do our best to keep him away.’
    ‘Why, my mother, even you could not do that.’
    ‘Think you not? What if I were to make the people here dislike him so that they refused to have him?’
    ‘That would be the very greatest inducement for him to come. He would ride into the town with his knights and soldiers in such force that none would dare stand against him.’
    ‘You are right, my son. Even so, I do not intend that my subjects should be kept in ignorance of the kind of man he is.’
    ‘Let us not think of him,’ said Richard. ‘We are happy without him.’
    And so they were.
    ‘Let us plan a masque for tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Could you write some special verses for the occasion? What think you?’
    He thought it was an excellent idea and he would set