‘He will grieve for me sorely, Eleanor. He truly loves me.’

‘Of course; as I do and Arthur.’

‘I know. And it is because I love you all so dearly that it grieves me so much to leave you. Eleanor, listen to Guy. Take care of your brother. Oh, I know he is a duke and thinks himself a man. But I greatly fear John.’

‘Yes, Mother, I know. So do we all.’

‘John is a monster. He has his follies but do not underestimate them, my child. Even now he is with the King of France. What do you think they are plotting?’

‘Philip is our friend, Mother, not John’s.’

‘You should not put your trust in kings, daughter. Philip is our friend today and John’s tomorrow. Philip’s desire is to get for himself what John now owns and is by right Arthur’s. That is Philip’s part in all this.’

‘He has been good to Arthur.’

‘Only to serve his own purpose. I would like to see Arthur stand alone, with mighty armies behind him. I would like to see him and Guy ride together to victory.’

‘It will come.’

‘Eleanor, watch over your brother. Do not let him be too trusting, particularly of his Uncle John.’

Eleanor swore that she would do her best to carry out her mother’s wish but she insisted that Constance would soon be rising from her bed and doing all that she had done before. She was merely suffering from the depression which often follows a birth.

So it seemed for a week or so and then one day her condition changed for the worse. She sent for Arthur, Eleanor and Guy.

She said: ‘This is indeed the end. My loved ones, take care of each other.’

They knelt by her bed, Arthur who was but thirteen years old, Eleanor who was not much older, and Guy who had loved her for years and had so recently married her.

Thus died Arthur’s mother, and that day the young Duke lost his best friend and adviser.


John was at Chinon with Isabella. He was amused to think how anxious the Lusignans would be to have him so close. He laughed to Isabella about it as they lay in bed together.

‘I’ll warrant they will keep a close watch on the tower. Imagine it, sweetheart, they won’t know from one day to the next when I shall be bearing down on them with an avenging force. Hugh will be trembling in his shoes.’

Isabella frowned. ‘It is not his custom to tremble,’ she said.

‘Oh, you would defend him then?’

‘I would speak the truth,’ she answered, a little defiantly.

‘You are but a child,’ he said. ‘What do you know of these matters?’

‘I know Hugh better than you do. You forget I lived in his castle for a while.’

‘Do not remind me of it,’ he said, ‘or I might fall into a rage. You have seen my rage … once. Before I had you I was always in and out of them.’

‘Then I have brought you some good, for I confess when you lie on the floor and kick you look … mad.’

She had knelt up on the bed, her hair falling about her shoulders. He lay back, feasting his eyes on her.

He caught her wrist.

‘Are you trying to anger me, little Isabella?’

‘I must speak the truth,’ she answered.

‘Virtuous little wife,’ he said. ‘I too will speak truth and tell you that I like not to hear you defending Hugh.’

‘I do not defend him. I say that he is no coward. Ask anyone. They will tell you the same. He fears no man – not you nor the King of France, and if you say he is trembling in his shoes I will say that I do not believe he is.’

He pulled her down beside him. ‘If you were not so pretty I might be angry with you.’

‘Why should I worry about that when I am pretty enough to divert your anger? And I will tell you this, that if I were not, I would still say what I thought.’

‘She has spirit, this Queen of England.’

‘Would you wish her otherwise?’ she asked him, stooping over him and putting her soft cheek against his.

He caught her in a fierce embrace. ‘I would not have her other than she is,’ he said.

‘So thought I,’ she answered.

But later he remembered that she had spoken too warmly in Hugh’s favour and he felt displeased.


There was to be a visitor to Chinon. It was Queen Berengaria. She had heard that the King was resting there a while and would come to visit him and his Queen.

‘Poor Berengaria!’ said John to Isabella. ‘She had a sad time with Richard. He was a strange man. He didn’t care for women. You wouldn’t have liked that, my Isabella, would you?’

‘Perhaps he would have been different had I been his queen.’

‘Ho. The vanity! Nay, Richard chose his loves from minstrel boys. You know the story of Blondel. I used to wish I’d cut out his tongue before he went singing round the castles of Europe.’

‘You were not fond of your brother?’

‘Fond of Richard, who took the throne from me when my father had promised it to me!’

‘And Richard promised it to Arthur at one time. Poor John, you were hard done by.’

‘Ah, but I came into my own, did I not?’

‘You did.’

‘And secured the greatest prize in the world … snatched it right from under the nose of that Hugh of whom you speak so highly. Why so? What happened that you should grow warm in praise of him? By God, if he ever laid hands on you I’d have him flayed alive.’

She laughed up at him provocatively. ‘Forget not that I was betrothed to him.’

‘And did he take advantage of that? You were a virgin when you came to me, I’ll swear.’

‘Ah yes,’ she said. ‘I was a virgin but a somewhat regretful one.’

‘You mean … you tried to seduce him and he would have none of it?’

‘He is a man such as you could not understand, John.’

‘And you did?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I did. He thought me too young and would never touch me.’

‘Different from me, eh?’

‘As different as it is possible to be.’

‘And now I have him, Isabella. He is going to be brought to Court and there he will be sentenced to fight a duel, and I shall make sure he is not the victor.’

‘Are you afraid of him?’

‘Afraid of a petty count! What mean you?’

‘That I might like him better than I like you.’

She had gone too far. She had seen the red lights in his eyes.

She ran her lips over his face and murmured: ‘Could you be as foolish as that? Poor Hugh, if he could but hear you now.’

She knew how to rouse him and she did.

There was a slight change in their relationship. She was no longer the child who marvelled at everything that was happening to her; she was taking a great deal of the pomp and luxury, the sexual excitement for granted. She had a will of her own and had never been faced with serious opposition.

She knew though that John was capable of the utmost cruelty. At the moment he wanted nothing but her; yet when he had talked of Hugh and had believed for a moment that she was more interested in her one-time suitor than he wished her to be, there had been such vicious cruelty momentarily unveiled in his expressive face that she had felt a tremor of alarm.

It was pleasant to welcome Berengaria.

‘Poor Berengaria!’ Isabella called her. What a sad life she had had! John joked about her relationship with Richard, when Berengaria had always been watching and hoping, and Richard ignoring her.

She was sad too but she was clearly impressed by Isabella’s startling beauty.

They talked together in Isabella’s apartment and Berengaria said how pleased she was to see John so happily married.

‘It is wonderful,’ said Berengaria wistfully, ‘to know such happiness as you must. It is obvious that the King is deeply enamoured of you. You are so young. Is it possible that you are not yet fourteen years of age?’

‘’Tis true,’ replied Isabella. ‘But I believe I am in advance of my years.’

‘You would need to be – so young and yet a wife. I was much older than you when I married.’

Isabella wondered what she herself would be like when she was Berengaria’s age.

It was pleasant to bask in her admiration. At the same time there was something depressing about Richard’s queen. She was so clearly an unhappy woman and she was too given to talking of the past. She kept bringing John’s sister Joanna into the conversation, and Joanna was dead – had died in childbirth. Apparently she and Berengaria had been great friends.

To talk of women dying in childbirth was not a pleasant topic for a young wife, although John had said that he did not want children yet because they would spoil her body and he liked it as it was.

Berengaria explained to John what a desperate position she was in. She had settled in Le Mans which was part of her dowry but she owned lands in England and she hoped that John would compensate her for these.

John was affable: as always he was ready to promise because he never considered it necessary to honour his promises.

‘My dear sister,’ he said, ‘you may rest assured that I will do everything within my power to help you. Now let us see what I can do. You shall have Bayeux and there are two castles in Anjou which shall be yours. It is only right that they should be. Richard would have wished it,’ he added piously.

Berengaria wept a little. ‘I wish Richard could hear you now,’ she said. ‘I don’t think he thought you would be so good to me.’

‘I am accustomed to being maligned,’ replied John. ‘Of course I was wild in my youth. What man worth his salt is not? But with responsibilities one changes. I have decided to give you a thousand marks a year.’

She kissed his hand and told him Heaven would reward him.

‘For,’ she said, ‘but for you, I should be little more than a pauper and have no alternative but to throw myself on to the mercy of my family. I had considered going to live with Blanche, my sister, but much as I love her I should hate to accept her bounty.’

‘You may trust me to see that you are well provided for,’ said John.

When she left Chinon Berengaria took an affectionate farewell of John and his younger Queen.

‘What will become of her, I wonder,’ said Isabella as they watched her ride away.

‘She will go and live with her sister Blanche of Champagne,’ said John with a smile, who had no intention of giving her what he had promised. Why should he, he reasoned. Let her sister provide for her.

‘Richard was never a husband to her,’ said Isabella. ‘She must have been very miserable.’

John gripped her arms, putting his face close to hers. ‘What would you have done, my desiring and desirable one, had you been married to Richard?’

‘Find lovers,’ she answered promptly.

He laughed, but he remembered that later.


When the day arrived for John to meet the Lusignans in a court set up by the King of France and presided over by him, John failed to put in an appearance.

This was exactly what Philip was hoping for. He had taken advantage of the truce between them and was prepared now to go into action. By not appearing John had given Philip the excuse he needed to go against him. As a vassal of Philip for Normandy he had insulted the King by flouting his wishes.

John, said Philip, must be taught a lesson.

He sent to Brittany asking that Arthur come to him as he would knight him and accept his fealty as Count of Anjou, Duke of Brittany and all the land with the exception of Normandy which was now in the hands of John.

Guy de Thouars, realising that this meant Philip was now prepared to help Arthur against John, most joyfully travelled with his young stepson to rendezvous with Philip.

This was the signal for John’s enemies to rise; and the Lusignans caught up with Arthur at Tours and there pledged to support him in his efforts to take from John not only his Continental possessions but the crown of England as well.


In the Abbey at Fontevraud the aged Eleanor was resting after the strenuous journey to Castile. She could congratulate herself that although it had impaired her health still further yet it had been a success and her granddaughter was indeed married to the son of the King of France. She had never lost sight of the fact that it was in that direction that real danger lay.

John was more or less firmly established on the throne of England; if he could keep a strong hand on his Continental possessions he would get through that dangerous period which followed accession to the throne. He was married to a beautiful young wife and if they had sons the people would be pleased to see the succession assured. The threat came from Arthur, of course; but now that Constance was dead he must have lost a certain amount of support. Eleanor could not mourn Constance – a woman whom she had always disliked. Perhaps Constance was too forceful, too much like herself. Looking back it was easy to understand that she wanted her son to have what she had considered his rights and there were many men who would have agreed with Constance. After all, her son was the son of an elder brother. Constance had made an error of judgement when she had refused to allow Arthur to be brought up in England.