The Plantagenet Prelude - Plaidy Jean (книги серия книги читать бесплатно полностью .TXT) 📗

‘You must completely recover from your ordeals before you think of departing,’ insisted Raymond.

‘You are good,’ replied Louis, ‘but I think we should not delay too long.’

‘You should be guided by my uncle,’ Eleonore warned him. ‘Remember how many men you have lost.’

Louis might have said, Yes, through your folly. If you had obeyed my orders and gone to the plateau we could have been defended as we made our way to you. But he said no such thing. He was glad that her good spirits were restored and that she so obviously reveled in the comforts Antioch had to offer.

He did remind her gently that they had after all come to fight the infidel and restore the Holy City to Christianity.

‘Nevertheless,’ said Eleonore sharply, ‘it would be folly to go on with the enterprise until we are equipped to do so.

Our men have suffered greatly. They need time to regain their health.’

‘And where better than here,’ said Raymond, ‘where they can rest secure among friends?’

Eleonore and Raymond exchanged smiles, and Louis agreed that they must indeed rest for a while. He turned to Raymond. ‘Although I thank you for your hospitality and am indeed grateful for it, you will understand me, I know, when I tell you that I am impatient to conclude my mission.’

‘I understand, of course,’ replied Raymond, ‘but I think the Queen is right when she says you should tarry a while.’

‘God will bless you for your goodness to us,’ answered Louis.

There was a walled garden in the palace. In it was a beautiful fountain in the centre of which was a statue depicting lovers embracing. Eleonore often went to this garden. Raymond knew it and it had become a meeting place.

They walked in it together arm in arm. She liked to feel the pressure of his fingers on her arm.

‘I live in fear,’ he told her, ‘that you will leave us soon.’

‘I will do my utmost to stay.’

‘The King grows restive.’

‘The King!’ There was a note of impatient contempt in her voice which he was quick to notice. It merely confirmed the assessment he had made of their relationship.

‘You should have been the commander,’ he ventured.

‘A woman?’ she asked.

‘A goddess rather.’

‘You say delightful things, Prince Raymond. I wonder if you mean them.’

He turned to face her. ‘Do you really doubt that?’

‘I am not sure.’

‘I would I could convince you.’

‘Perhaps one day you will.’

‘I would that you could stay here...forever.’

‘Forever? That is a long time.’

‘When two people are in such accord as I believe you and I are it does not seem long.’

‘Yes, we are in accord, are we not? I sensed it from the moment we met.’

‘You and I,’ he said. And he bent forward and laid his lips on her forehead. She trembled with a pleasure she had never before experienced.

‘That was a very pleasant uncle’s kiss,’ she said as though reminding him of their relationship.

‘Is it because of the nearness of our kinship that we understand each other so well?’

‘That may be so and we must not forget that kinship.’

‘Why should we remember it?’ he asked.

She was faintly embarrassed and said: ‘Perhaps I have misunderstood.’

‘Nay,’ he cried passionately. ‘You have misunderstood nothing. You know the state of my feelings for you. I lie awake at night wondering about yours for me.’

She said: ‘You are the Prince of Antioch married to Bohemund’s granddaughter. I am the heiress of Aquitaine married to the King of France.’

‘What of that?’

‘And you are my uncle.’

‘I never set much store by laws, did you?’

‘No,’ she admitted.

‘Shall we be frank?’

‘Let us be.’

‘There is nothing in my heart that I could not say to you.’

‘Nor is there in mine.’

‘I love you,’ said the Prince of Antioch. ‘You are the most exciting woman I ever met. I would that I had been the King of France. You and I would have been as one. What have you to say to that, my Queen? Will you be equally frank with me?’

‘You are the most exciting man I ever met. I would that you had been the King of France.’

‘Eleonore, then why should we deny ourselves what so clearly belongs to us?’

‘Because...’

‘Because of this close relationship.’

‘Raymond, you are in truth my uncle.’

‘Eleonore, you are in truth my love.’

He embraced her and her resistance fled. She laughed at him. Was she a woman to be bound by laws? She had sung of love, had written of love. Should she be afraid of it when she confronted it in its living form? This was the greatest adventure of her life. Raymond was the hero of romantic songs; Raymond was the lover she had always wanted. She despised the King of France. She loved the Prince of Antioch.

Neither was of a nature to hesitate. All barriers were swept away. That day Eleonore and the Prince of Antioch became lovers in truth.

He rode with her often; now and then they endeavoured to evade the party that they might repair to some secret place which he knew. They made of it a rendezvous. A bower – a small summer house in the grounds of one of his palaces.

His servants knew better than to interrupt him when he was there. Perhaps he had used it many times before with other women. Eleonore did not care. She believed that there was something in their relationship which set it apart from anything else either of them had experienced.

She was twenty-six years of age and he was forty-nine; yet to her he seemed the perfect lover. His experience delighted her; his charm overwhelmed her; constantly she compared him with Louis and deplored a fate which had given her to him.

She was passionately in love, recklessly so. Perhaps one or two people were aware of their relationship, but she did not care.

What if his wife discovered? Eleonore shrugged her shoulders. She knew that this was not the first time Raymond had broken his marriage vows. How could he have known that Eleonore was the one woman in the world for him if he had not had experience with many others? And if Louis discovered what was happening? She snapped her fingers. Let him discover; let him learn that there were real men in the world.

So they met and Eleonore assured herself that everything she had suffered on the road to Antioch had been worthwhile.

He told her he adored her; he could not imagine what his life had been without her. Dull, uninspired, scarcely worth the effort of living.

As they lay in the arbour guarded by Raymond’s servants, the Prince talked to her of his plans to keep her beside him.

‘Louis must be persuaded to stay here,’ he said.

‘He will never do that. He is quite stubborn. He has a fixed idea that he must go to the Holy Land to redeem his sins. He still dreams about Vitry-the-Burned. He will never give up the idea.’

‘Let me tell you of my plans. You will understand readily, I know. I would rather talk to you before I attempt to put my ideas before the King. Perhaps you will be able to make him see reason. We are harassed here continually. We are surrounded by the infidel. The French settlement here is so small that although it consists of brave men it is not enough to hold the land. If we are not stronger, in time we will be overrun by the Saracens. Aleppo is but a short distance from Antioch and here the enemy has his headquarters.

Only by strengthening our holdings here and taking these menacing cities can we assure the Christian influence on this territory, and if we were to lose the one way to the Holy Land it would be closed to Christians.’

‘And you suggest that Louis stays here, that you and he march on the Saracens in Aleppo?’

‘That would be wise. Louis should have taken Constantinople. He could have done it and I believe some of your bishops advised it.’

‘But that was in the hands of Manuel.’

‘The treacherous Greek! He is no friend to us.’