The Fatal Crown(217)

Henry gave her a broad grin. “I knew you would immediately grasp the essential point. Louis will not like my acquisition of Eleanor’s duchy, but …”He shrugged.

“My son …” Maud’s voice faltered. Henry had every reason to be jubilant for it was a golden opportunity, yet she could not deny her doubts about this sophisticated woman, eleven years Henry’s senior. “Do you love her?”

Henry looked amazed. “What an extraordinary question. Does it matter? We suit each other in every way. She will make a fine consort who will bear me sons. In any case there is nothing I would not do to gain England. You of all people should understand that. After what we have been through—the struggles, the battles, the losses—now the crown is almost within reach.”

For a moment Maud was silent, remembering that brief period of glory at Winchester when she had believed herself to be invincible, a heartbeat away from the throne, the crown virtually within her grasp. Was everything Henry said true, including the unimportance he gave love? asked a voice in her head. It was a question she could not answer.

Barely a week after Henry had returned from Paris, a herald from Anjou entered the great hall in Rouen Castle where Maud and Henry were seated at supper shortly after Vespers.

“My lord, Countess,” the herald gasped. “I bring sad tidings from your sons in Angers. Count Geoffrey is dead.”

Maud sat frozen to her seat in shock.

“Dead?” Henry rose to his feet.

“On his way back to Anjou, overheated from the journey, he bathed in the cold waters of the Loire. By dawn he was in a high fever. The next day he died.”

Try as she might Maud could not believe he was dead. She had never loved Geoffrey of Anjou, never much liked him in fact. Her heart had been given elsewhere. But she had borne Geoffrey two children, grown to respect his prowess as a cunning campaigner, and admired his unexpected astuteness as a ruler of both Anjou and Normandy. Without him the duchy would not now belong to Henry. For more than twenty years their lives and purposes had been intertwined. She could not weep for him, but she deeply regretted that he had not lived long enough to see Henry become Duke of Aquitaine and herself Queen of England.

Maud and Henry arrived in Le Mans to find plans for an impressive funeral already under way. It was rumored that hundreds from Anjou and Maine would flock to Le Mans to see their popular lord buried. The day after their arrival, Geoffrey’s will was read. A surprising clause in the will stipulated that Henry, as eldest son, would inherit Anjou and Maine—unless he became King of England. Then he would forfeit the county, which would pass to the second son, Geoffrey. Furthermore, the Count’s body must remain unburied until all three sons swore an oath to fulfill their father’s wishes. The funeral was immediately postponed.

The will’s contents shocked everyone. Henry, throwing one of his famous temper tantrums, flatly refused to swear the oath, causing immediate trouble between himself and his brother Geoffrey. Maud was forced to watch her sons quarrel violently over their inheritance.

But in the end, at her insistence, Henry grudgingly swore to abide by his father’s wishes. Under no illusions about her son, Maud knew that her ambitious Henry would never give up Anjou when he became King of England. In the unprincipled tradition of his Norman forebears, he would seize power whenever and wherever he could, regardless of the cost. He wanted it all: Count of Anjou, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, as well as King of England. Would he ever have enough? she wondered.

Geoffrey of Anjou was buried in the church of St. Julien, the same church in which he had been married, on a warm September day, brilliant with sunshine. Inside the church someone had surrounded the bier with armfuls of the golden broom Geoffrey had so loved. Maud noticed tears running down the cheeks of those who passed by his coffin. Despite his years in Normandy, Geoffrey had lived and died a true Angevin and was deeply mourned by his subjects. A black veil concealing her face, Maud gazed down at her husband’s body. Geoffrey was dressed in his favorite blue and green, a blue cap with its sprig of broom perched on his head. His love for the bright yellow flower, the planta-genesta, had caused him to adopt it as his surname—Plantagenet. The lions upon his mantle, tunic and shield were made of gold. Precious gems adorned his belt and collar. The very picture of elegance, in death Geoffrey the Handsome looked exactly as he would have wished.

Still dry-eyed, Maud wondered why Geoffrey had never discussed his will with her. He must have known the unexpected clause would cause an uproar, setting his sons against each other. What could have possessed him to insert it? It was almost as if—no, impossible, Maud reasoned, yet the niggling thought would not be stilled. Suppose, yes, suppose Geoffrey had always wondered if his eldest son had sprung from his own loins. Had, in fact, half-suspected Stephen of being the father? Then the clause made sense: If Henry attained his own father’s throne of England, then Geoffrey wanted his natural son to inherit his own county of Anjou.