In her final year, Eleanor of Aquitaine dictates her memoirs to her secretary, Aline. Here, she describes her husband, King Henry II, with his mistress, “Fair Rosamond” de Clifford.
Excerpt
Too many men behave like rams in rut, but surely there were few as hot as Henry. He was insatiable. He sired eight, nine, living children on me as well as more bastards than I choose to count. He lured women to his bed-lust by the score.
Wives learn to turn their face way, as did I for fourteen years. But there came a season when I could no longer wear a tranquil mask in my husband’s hall.
Does the name Rosamond Clifford mean anything to you, Aline? No? You are too young. But it will when you have been a wife in England for some years. Bards and jongleurs will beg meat and a night at your manor in exchange for a song and a poem or two. And you will then be surprised to learn how, from spite and jealousy, your former mistress, the old Queen Eleanor, killed sweet Rosamond.
Hah! I thought that slander might stir you. It startled me the first time I heard it.
I speak of the summer after Becket fled to Louis, the year I governed our lands from Angers while Henry went warring—or should I say whoring?—in Wales. Over time I gleaned news of Henry and this woman.
Among the knights serving in Wales was Walter de Clifford, a Norman who held an estate in the border country, near Bredelais. Perhaps in his rustic world this fool had not learned to lock up his women at Henry’s approach, although, God knows, my husband’s reputation galloped before him along every road. No wife or daughter, no female ward or hostage, was presented to Henry unless the lord of a place where he stopped had either malice or ambition in his heart.
It may be that de Clifford, seeking some advantage, steered his daughter in harm’s way, but that I cannot say. Or Henry may have come on her near Oxford, for she was schooled there, at Godstow, by nuns.
This Rosamond Clifford smote Henry as no paramour had possessed him before. I’m sure he thought only to bed her, perhaps for a night, perhaps for a week; but she possessed him till she died. Here was an attachment without precedent in its intensity. I gather this naughtiness was all a-buzz for a season or two before word reached me. The fool confused the hurt in his loins for love! Love, mark me! Henry in his lust was so confused that he squandered his love—the quality by which men attach each other—on a woman! In the world of noble liaisons this affair was passing strange.
Until this Rosamond bewitched his senses, Henry summoned enough discretion to manage trysts and conquests in dark corners of a hall. But Rosamond! With her he must be seen. With her he must display affection. On her he must lavish gifts. Her he must install within a short ride of our palace at Woodstock! You may believe me when I say that Henry was quicker to give the kiss of peace to Rosamond than to Thomas Becket.
I spent my first decade with Henry believing that a bull in March must yield in time to November chills, becoming a sober, wiser soul. For the longest while I thought I might one day check his bridle. But it was not to be. Years spent apart, on opposite sides of the Channel, did not help me command him, although they eased the tensions between us. Then the first blasts of the Becket affair taught me what I should have learned, that Henry would not be ruled.
Not even in the matter of discretion. He had stabbed his blade in women by the score—I see I have inured you to the coarser world, Aline—while retaining the decency to greet them next morning as if they were nuns. But his whore Rosamond left him drunk to possess her, again and again. Would that she but sapped his seed. However, she also sapped his brains. I heard constant whispers of their dealings, of course. If a noble lady does not equip herself with ears she will be as innocent of news as any village idiot. But this infamous liaison was a fire; the closer one got to the source, the hotter the whispers became. Here was one woman whom the late Saint Bernard might hate with a blameless conscience and my blessing—for in truth she was a fallen angel.
But in the matter of her death the Almighty knows me innocent. When I had power to send her dead, I did not; and when God wisely chose to take her from this world I was under constant watch by Henry’s spies.
Henry himself spent the winter wearing out horses on the frosty road between Rosamond at Woodstock, and Clarendon, where he rewrote the laws of England. For that I cannot mock him. We landed in a kingdom where it seemed that every manor and shire had its own ancient laws and punishments. So I grant the devil his due: Henry imposed on the backward English a common “law and custom of the land.” It was there, at Clarendon, that Henry’s conclave of nobles and prelates approved his idea of swearing twelve just men to report malefactors.
That done, Henry took ship to preside at our Easter court in Angers. No doubt he came hot from Rosamond’s bed to mine, where he conceived John on me. That October I resumed my role as regent of England. I traveled in Oxfordshire—Woodstock was always a favorite palace—where it seemed the very birds clamored “Rosamond, sweet Rosamond.” I spoke just now of approaching a fire. I knew soon enough that our seat at Woodstock was the burning hearth: Henry’s hussy lodged mere miles away. In that season I experienced something that never befell me before or since. Whenever I moved through a crowd, people fell silent.
No matter. I lodged at Oxford castle, giving birth to John the day after Christmas.
Granted Rosamond was three-and-thirty. I was forty-four, old enough that I no longer roused passion in the husband whose children I bore. To Henry, my body was as well rehearsed as a hasty mass before breakfast.
But kill her? No, I would not dignify his harlot in that way. No plot of mine would stoop to canonize her beauty by sealing it in death. Unless perhaps my prayers condemned her. (Chapter 22 ends.)
Copyright 2008 Robert Fripp. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
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