Eleanor Of Aquitaine Quotes

I inhale hope with every breath I take.

…she remembered watching a summer sunset from this very spot. Not so long ago; just a lifetime.

Autumn that year painted the countryside in vivid shades of scarlet, saffron and russet, and the days were clear and crisp under harvest skies.

For every wound, the ointment of time.

…a cynic who was still saddened whenever his jaundiced view of mankind was confirmed...

Even after more than five hundred years in Heaven, Eleanor of Aquitaine still missed quarreling and dressing up. Eleanor missed strong, sweet smells. Eleanor missed feeling hot and being cold. Eleanor missed Henry. She missed life.

During her lifetime Eleanor of Aquitaine had not been a patient woman. While she had lived, she had learned to bide her time, but biding one's time is a very different thing from patience.

You will get no poetry from me, nor songs of love. But I will love you, every day for the rest of my life.

It was just like him, she thought; with him, a happy ending was always a foregone conclusion. But such was the power of his faith that when she was with him; she found herself believing in happy endings, too.

Why is it honesty when a man speaks his mind and madness when a woman does?

...Life without sinning was like food without salt, pure but tasteless.

When does he ever think?" Richard straddled a chair and accepted a wind cup from Raoul. "If he were to sell his brain, he could claim it had never been used.", Chapter 7

In time of war, the Devil makes more room in Hell.

Grief is not very different from illness: in the impetus of its fire it does not recognise lords, it does not fear colleagues, it does not respect or spare anyone, not even itself." [First letter to Pope Celestine (1193)]

The great hall was shimmering in light, sun streaming from the open windows, and ablaze with colour, the walls decorated with embroidered hangings in rich shades of gold and crimson. New rushes had been strewn about, fragrant with lavender, sweet woodruff, and balm... the air was... perfumed with honeysuckle and violet, their seductive scents luring in from the gardens butterflies as blue as the summer sky.

Court life for a queen of France at that time was, however, stultifyingly routine. Eleanor found that she was expected to be no more than a decorative asset to her husband, the mother of his heirs and the arbiter of good taste and modesty.

Pitiful and pitied by no one, why have I come to the ignominy of this detestable old age, who was ruler of two kingdoms, mother of two kings? My guts are torn from me, my family is carried off and removed from me. The young king [crown prince Henry, †1183] and the count of Britanny [prince Geoffrey, †1186] sleep in dust, and their most unhappy mother is compelled to be irremediably tormented by the memory of the dead. Two sons remain to my solace, who today survive to punish me, miserable and condemned. King Richard [the Lionheart] is held in chains [in captivity with Emperor Henry VI of Germany]. His brother, John, depletes his kingdom with iron [the sword] and lays it waste with fire. In all things the Lord has turned cruel to me and attacked me with the harshness of his hand. Truly his wrath battles against me: my sons fight amongst themselves, if it is a fight where where one is restrained in chains, the other, adding sorrow to sorrow, undertakes to usurp the kingdom of the exile by cruel tyranny. Good Jesus, who will grant that you protect me in hell and hide me until your fury passes, until the arrows which are in me cease, by which my whole spirit is sucked out?" [Third letter to Pope Celestine (1193)]

Outside, the sky was clear, stars gleaming in its ebony vastness like celestial fireflies. It was bitterly cold, and Hywel's every breath trailed after him in pale puffs of smoke. The glazed snow crackled underfoot as he started towards the great hall.

Without the light the beauty remains hidden,” Gofrid said. “But it is always there. Just like God’s love, or a father’s, or a mother’s. Remember that, Alienor. You are loved, whether you see it or not.

she knew what such grief was like and she had built her own defenses high over the years. But if you raised them too much, they became a prison and in the end you drowned with no one to hear you scream.

We've schemed and fought and loved until we are so entangled in hearts and minds that there is no way to set us free. God help us both, Harry, for we will never be rid of each other. Not even death will do that.

At least it was never dull, my darling. And you will be remembered long after we've all turned to dust. But so will I.

She knew she'd wounded him when he'd least expected it, and her satisfaction lasted until the door had closed behind him. Once he was gone, it ebbed away along with her anger, leaving her with naught but the ashes and embers of a dying hearth fire.

All that remained were poignant memories, and she must face reality, not live on dreams.

There was a time when I thought I could change everything. I have learned the hard way that we only have so much strength: better to use it for fights where we stand a chance of winning.

From whom but the Devil did this advice come under which you are acting? Those who are urging you to repeat your former wrongdoings against an innocent person are seeking in this not your honour but their own convenience. They are clearly the enemies of your crown and the disturbers of your realm.

Perhaps the most important lesson I have learned is to embrace the small pleasures and turn them into lasting memories.

You might as well face it. You're not going to be able to fight for the crown. You'll just have to grit your teeth and let us hand it over to you at the bargaining table.

Geoffrey looked startled to see both his great-uncles bearing down upon him with such haste; he hadn’t realized men their age could move so fast.

It is not easy to be stranded between two worlds, the sad truth is that we can never feel completely comfortable in either world.

When people want to insult a man, they cast slurs upon his courage. But the worst they can say about a woman is to impugn her chastity.

Twilight was laying claim to the cité, and the sky was a deepening shade of lavender, spangled with stars and fleecy clouds the colour of plums.

Because to outwit your rivals, first you had to know their ways and how to play their games.

That you should choose your battles wisely. You cannot fight everything and win. Sometimes the price of losing is beyond what you can afford to pay, but that applies to winning as well.

He could still remember how breathtakingly beautiful Eleanor was that day. He'd have been content to gaze into her eyes for hours, trying to decide if they were green with gold flecks or gold with green flecks. She had high, finely sculpted cheekbones, soft, flawless skin he'd burned to touch, and lustrous dark braids entwined with gold-threaded ribbons he yearned to unfasten; he'd have bartered his chances of salvation to bury his face in that glossy, perfumed hair, to wind it around his throat and see it spread out on his pillow. He'd watched, mesmerized, as a crystal raindrop trickled toward the sultry curve of her mouth and wanted nothing in his life so much, before or since, as he wanted her.

This was the moment he most loved about tourneying, that first glorious sortie with banners streaming, trumpets blaring, and the earth atremble with pounding hooves as hundreds of knights came together in a spectacular clash of sound and fury.

Hell and furies!" Eleanor had begun to pace, her skirts swirling about her ankles. "What was he thinking?" "When does he ever think?" Richard straddled a chair and accepted a wine cup from Raoul. "If he were to sell his brain, he could claim it had never been used.

But where is it written in the Gospel that we are instructed to hate anyone, however erroneous their beliefs might be?

The darkest prisons were those of the mind.

together they watched the fireflies twinkle in and out like hopes in the darkness.

Culture is what we choose to repeat.

By the wrath of God, queen of England.

I thought I was wed to a king- now I find I am wed to a monk.

She never knew from one moment to the next how he was going to behave toward her and therefore she constantly had to adjust her balance. It was exhausting.

All that remains is regret for what might have been. It is like standing in the ashes of a fire you once approached to warm your body a little, but which burned you to the bone instead.

He’d passed the longest night of his life locked in mortal combat with his ghosts, calling up and then disavowing twenty years of memories. He would banish that bitch from his heart if it meant cutting her out with his own dagger. And when at last he allowed himself to grieve, he did so silently and unwillingly, his tears hidden by the darkness, his rage congealing into a core of ice.

The formal education of women was rarely considered important. Girls of good birth were taught domestic skills at home or in a convent, and rarely learned to read and write, for it was feared that if they did they would waste their talents writing love letters or reading romances that led to promiscuity.

A husband or wife did not have the right either to demand sex from his or her spouse or to refuse it, and there was a catalogue of forbidden sexual practices, notably homosexuality, bestiality, certain sexual positions, masturbation, the use of aphrodisiacs, and oral sex, which could incur a penance of three years’ duration. Nor were people to make love on Sundays, holy days, or feast days, or during Lent, pregnancy, or menstruation. People believed that if these rules were disobeyed, deformed children or lepers might result.

In this martial world dominated by men, women had little place. The Church's teachings might underpin feudal morality, yet when it came to the practicalities of life, a ruthless pragmatism often came into play. Kings and noblemen married for political advantage, and women rarely had any say in how they or their wealth were to be disposed in marriage. Kings would sell off heiresses and rich widows to the highest bidder, for political or territorial advantage, and those who resisted were heavily fined. Young girls of good birth were strictly reared, often in convents, and married off at fourteen or even earlier to suit their parents' or overlord's purposes. The betrothal of infants was not uncommon, despite the church's disapproval. It was a father's duty to bestow his daughters in marriage; if he was dead, his overlord or the King himself would act for him. Personal choice was rarely and issue. Upon marriage, a girl's property and rights became invested in her husband, to whom she owed absolute obedience. Every husband had the right to enforce this duty in whichever way he thought fit--as Eleanor was to find out to her cost. Wife-beating was common, although the Church did at this time attempt to restrict the length of the rod that a husband might use.

Indeed, she had started to wonder if her blessings might be in her daughters and their progeny rather than in her sons. There was greatness in the female side of her line, and if she could nurture it and enhance its luster, then she would.

Giraldus claimed that he had heard about Eleanor's adultery with Geoffrey from the saintly Bishop Hugh of Lincoln, who had learned of it from Henry II of England, Geoffrey's son and Eleanor's second husband. Eleanor was estranged from Henry at the time Giraldus was writing, and the king was trying to secure an annulment of their marriage from the Pope. It would have been to his advantage to declare her an adulterous wife who had had carnal relations with his father, for that in itself would have rendered their marriage incestuous and would have provided prima facie grounds for its dissolution.

All he wanted was enough time to consider all his options without being dragged into his household’s petty squabbles or being nagged by his wife about that damnable pilgrimage. Was that so much to ask? Apparently so, for he’d yet to find a peaceful moment at Caen, not with Marguerite sulking and Aimar lurking and Will acting put-upon and Geoff wanting to lay plans and Richard strutting around as if he were the incarnation of Roland and poor Tilda grieving over Maman’s absence and his father refusing to heed any voice but his own.

Aquitaine, or Gascony as the English preferred to call it, was actually a duchy subject to the French crown which had been inherited by English kings after the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II. Its status had long been a source of dispute and conflict between the two kingdoms, leading ultimately to the outbreak of the Hundred Years War in 1337.

having something that meant everything was a double-edged sword. It meant you had so much more to lose. ***

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,

one may scarcely find one man among seven women, so many women are there widowed whilst their husbands are alive’.

Richard grinned, very pleased with himself for having found a way to honor his mother, thwart his father, and serve God, while having a grand adventure at the same time.

as was his way, once he acknowledged the problem, he set about finding a means to resolve it

To call it a “setback” is like calling the Expulsion from Eden a minor misunderstanding.

Hal and Richard show all the good will of Cain and Abel.

The book is Brittany and the Angevins: Province and Empire, 1158–1203, by Judith A. Everard,

Without the light the beauty remains hidden,” Gofrid said. “But it is always there.

The women were active, the men passive, and that made Richenza smile as she absorbed wisdom in that moment. Her grandmother had often been told she did not know her place, but truly she did.

He'd never seen one so vibrant, though, or so vividly compelling... those glowing green eyes sparkling with sunlight and curiosity and silent laughter, and when she glanced in Henry's direction, she held his gaze, a look that was both challenging and enigmatic... He was utterly certain that this was Eleanor of Aquitaine, and no less sure that the French King must be one of God's greatest fools.

It was a basic tenet of faith with men of Ranulf’s class that a knight, trained in the ways of war since boyhood, could easily vanquish lesser foes, as much a belief in the superiority of blood and breeding as in the benefits of battle lore and killing competence. Ranulf had accepted this comforting conviction, too, but no one seemed to have told his assailants that they were inferior adversaries.

He believed that his superior intellect mattered more than his physical defects and saw no reason why he must defer to these fortunate young men with handsome faces and healthy bodies and empty heads.

I know you do not care much for such revelries, but trust me—this one you will enjoy, Harry. You and I will sit at the high table, eating porpoise and swan, whilst we watch my male kinfolk eating humble pie!

Arthur managed to speak to his grandmother [Queen Eleanor of England], demanding that she evacuate the castle with all her possessions and then go peaceably wherever she wished, for he wanted to show nothing but honour to her person. The Queen replied that she would not leave it, but if he behaved as a courtly gentlemen, he would quit this place, for he would find plenty of castles to attack other than the one she was in.

A gain I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to men of skill but time and chance happen to them all.

Petronella’s expression was hard with defiance. “I love him.” Her voice was fierce. “You don’t know anything about love.” “Oh, but I do,” Alienor replied bitterly. “Because I love you, and you have just broken my heart.

More than men had died at Lincoln. It seemed to Stephen that reality was a casualty, too, for nothing made sense anymore. What was he doing here in the solar of Lincoln Castle, bleeding all over the Earl of Chester’s wife?

Well, dearest, what would you tell a farmer who had an over-abundant harvest? To plant less, of course!"... "I am not complaining about the frequency of the planting," she said. "I’d just rather not reap a crop every year.

That springtime does not last forever and that the fine seasons should have their harvest gathered and stored against harsher times. That you should choose your battles wisely. You cannot fight everything and win. Sometimes the price of losing is beyond what you can afford to pay, but that applies to winning as well.” She narrowed her focus on the girls. “Be very careful and think before you act. Make friends with those who you know will stay true to you and reward them fittingly.

But Lord Harry has a good heart. Moreover, he truly likes women." "Most men do, lass," Ranulf pointed out in amusement, and was surprised when she shook her head again. "No, my Lord." She contradicted him with an odd smile, one that was both cynical and sad. "Most men like to lay with women.

All that remains is regret for what might have been. It is like standing in the ashes of a fire you once approached to warm your body a little, but which burned you to the bone instead. Now the ashes are cold, and sometimes you remember that even when your hand was in the flames, you still had a terrible need to thrust it deeper.

The last time Ranulf had run into Sulien, the older man had called him a misbegotten English Judas and spat onto the ground at his feet. Yet now that same man was approaching the bed with a jovial smile, so apparently pleased to see the Judas again that Ranulf half-expected him to announce that a fatted calf had been killed in his honor.

Perhaps the Queen's prayers, and those of Bernard, had been efficacious, or perhaps Louise had been more attentive in bed, for during 1145--the exact date is not recorded--she bore a daughter, who was named Marie in honour of the Virgin. If the infant was not the male heir to France so desired by the King--the Salic law forbade the succession of females to the throne--her arrival encouraged the royal parents to hope for a son in the future. Relationships between aristocratic parents and children were rarely close. Queens and noblewomen did not nurse their own babies, but handed them over at birth into the care of wet nurses, leaving themselves free to become pregnant again.

It puzzled Maud that her male relatives could not see this. Was it that men could not believe a woman might share their ambitions, their need for power? Eleanor saw herself as more than Henry’s queen, mother of his children. First and foremost, she was Duchess of Aquitaine, never doubting that she could have ruled as well as any man and better than most.

She wanted to order him clapped in irons, as he so deserved. But she was stopped by what she saw in the faces of the watching men: disapproval, instinctive and involuntary, but disapproval, nonetheless. They were not comfortable when power was wielded by a woman, not at a man’s expense, a man who had just acquitted himself so spectacularly at Lincoln, winning their reluctant respect in a way she knew she never could.

John, watching in dismay, saw his great chance slipping through his fingers, and he swung around to demand of his father, “Papa, does this mean Richard has bested you and Aquitaine is lost?” Eleanor winced, Geoffrey rolled his eyes, and Henry gave his youngest a look John had never gotten from him before. “My life would have been much more peaceful if I’d had only daughters,” he snapped. “As for Aquitaine, it is yours if you can take it.

There can have been no doubt in Eleanor's mind as to what was expected of her as a wife. In her day, women were supposed to be chaste both inside and outside marriage, virginity and celibacy being highly prized states. When it came to fornication, women were usually apportioned the blame, because they were the descendants of Eve, who had tempted Adam in the Garden of Eden, with such dire consequences. Women, the Church taught, were the weaker vessel, the gateway to the Devil, and therefore the source of all lechery. St. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote: "To live with a woman without danger is more difficult than raising the dead to life." Noblewomen, he felt, were the most dangerous so fall. Women were therefore kept firmly in their place in order to prevent them from luring men away from the paths of righteousness. Promiscuity--and its often inevitable consequence, illicit pregnancy--brought great shame upon a woman and her family, and was punishable by fines, social ostracism, and even, in the case of aristocratic and royal women, execution. Unmarried women who indulged in fornication devalued themselves on the marriage market. In England, women who were sexually experienced were not permitted to accuse men of rape in the King's court. Female adultery was seen as a particularly serious offence, since it jeopardized the laws of inheritance. Men, however, often indulged in casual sex and adultery with impunity. Because the virtue of high-born women was jealously guarded, many men sought sexual adventures with lower-class women. Prostitution was common and official brothels were licensed and subject to inspection in many areas. There was no effective contraception apart from withdrawal, and the Church frowned upon that anyway: this was why so many aristocratic and royal bastards were born during this period.

Yesterday I heard some of the castle servants talking about a funeral for one of the stable lads. He went skating last week on the pond in the village, but the ice was not thick enough and he drowned. I like to skate on the ice,too, Papa, have my own pair of bone skates. I could drown crossing the Channel as Uncle Robert fears... or I could drown back in Angers, if I was unlucky like that stable lad." Geoffrey's mouth twitched. "God help me," he said, "I've sired a lawyer!

Ranulf had spent much of his life watching those he loved wrestle with the seductive, lethal lure of kingship. It had proved the ruination of his cousin Stephen, a good man who had not made a good king. For his sister Maude, it had been an unrequited love affair, a passion she could neither capture nor renounce. For Hywel, it had been an illusion, a golden glow ever shimmering along the horizon. He believed that his nephew had come the closest to mastery of it, but at what cost?

After the dedication, Eleanor saw Bernard privately, probably at her own request. He came prepared to offer more spiritual comfort, thinking that she too might be suffering qualms of conscience over Vitry, but he was surprised to learn that she was not. Nevertheless, several matters were indeed troubling her, not the least the problems of her sister. She asked him to use his influence with the Pope to have the excommunication on Raoul and Petronilla lifted and their marriage recognised by the Church. In return, she would persuade Louis to make peace with Theobald of Champagne and recognise Pierre de la Chatre as Archbishop of Bourges. Bernard was appalled at her brazen candour. In his opinion, these affairs were no business of a twenty-two-year-old woman. He was, in fact, terrified of women and their possible effects on him. An adolescent, first experiencing physical desire for a young girl, he had been so filled with self-disgust that he had jumped into a freezing cold pond & remained there until his erection subsided. He strongly disapproved of his sister, who had married a rich man; because she enjoyed her wealth, he thought of her as a whore, spawned by Satan to lure her husband from the paths of righteousness, and refused to have anything to do with her. Nor would he allow his monks any contact with their female relatives. Now there stood before him the young, worldly, and disturbingly beautiful Queen of France, intent upon meddling in matters that were not her concern. Bernard's worst suspicions were confirmed: here, beyond doubt, was the source of that "Counsel of the Devil" that had urged the King on to disaster and plunged him into sin and guilt. His immediate reaction was to admonish Eleanor severely.

I am not going to let him win, Guillaume. Not this time. I could not keep him from making my mother pay the price for our failed rebellion. Fifteen years she has been his prisoner, fifteen years! And she is his prisoner, for all that she no longer wants for a queen’s comforts. I have had to submit to his demands and subject myself to his whims and endure the indignity of having him brandish the crown before me as he would tease a dog with a bone. But no more. I will not let him rob me of my birthright, and I will not let him keep me from honoring my vow to defend the Holy Land. I do think he is behind that very opportune rebellion in my duchy, and I would not put it past him to be conniving with the Count of Toulouse, either. And if by chance he did not, it is only because he did not think of it. No, a reckoning is long overdue, and we will have it at Bonsmoulins.

By their society's rigid standards, Annora was no beauty, for she bore no resemblance whatsoever to the tall, willowy, golden-haired maidens so admired by their minstrels and poets, fair maidens demure and docile and unfailingly deferential to male authority. No bards would be singing Annora's praises; she was short and dark and stubborn and so volatile that her brothers called her Hellcat. So did Ranulf, but on his lips, it became an endearment. He wished now that he could have unbraided her hair; when loose, it put him in mind of a hot summer night, so black and sultry-soft was it.

Maude did lie still as he moved away, although her compliance was due to exhaustion. "Brien," she said, so softly that he had to lean closer to hear, "I thank you too. I owe you more than I could ever repay, mayhap even my life. You've been so loyal, and I . . . I did not even give you an earldom like Rainald!" Her smile was hesitant, her jest no less tentative. But Brien knew what she was really asking-- why he'd been so loyal. He even knew what she would never let herself ask-- why he cared. Reaching out, he entwined the tip of her long black braid around his fingers, remembering the way her hair had looked in John Marshal's bedchamber, tumbling loose and lush and free about her shoulders. "I admire courage above all else," he said, "and you are as brave as you are beautiful, as brave as any man and braver by far than most. Loyalty is the least that you deserve.

Maude was so close to the flames that she was in danger of being singed. She was thirsty and hungry and half frozen and so fatigued she felt lightheaded. But none of that mattered. She was quite content to stay right where she was, in Brien's arms, surrounded by laughing, exultant men, men you were calling her Queen Maude as if they truly meant it, rejoicing in her triumph and making it their own. Brien was holding her as if he had no intention of letting her go, dark eyes never leaving her face. "You are the most amazing woman," he said, and laughed, too happy to hide it, to keep up the pretense between them any longer. Maude smiled at him as her own defense dropped, realizing what was happening and not caring, not now, not anymore. "My only regret," she said, "is that I'll not be there to see Stephen's face when he finds out I've bested him!" That set them all to laughing, and this time she knew the jokes were at Stephen's expense, not hers. "If I do not sit down soon, I'm likely to fall down," she confided to Brien, for she could admit to physical frailties now; she'd earned that right. His arm tightened around her shoulder, and when he called out for a chair, so many men volunteered that Maude began to laugh. Never had she felt like this, so in harmony with her world, so at ease with herself. It was a wonderful feeling, had been a long time coming.

They both laughed, and then Maude surprised herself by saying, "You've been a good friend, Brien, for longer than I can remember. You helped me get through the worst time of my life, and I never thanked you . . . not until now." She did not need to elaborate; he understood. Their memories were suddenly functioning as one, taking them back more than thirteen years. She had been twenty-five, and no longer able to resist her father's will, agreeing at last to wed Geoffrey of Anjou. On her betrothal journey from England to Normandy, the old king had entrusted her to the custody of his eldest son, Robert, and his foster son, Brien. They had carried out the king's charge, escorted Maude to Rouen for the plight troth, and the following year she and Geoffrey had been wed at Le Mans. "Why should you thank me? I did as the king bade, turned you over to Geoffrey of Anjou, when I ought to have hidden you away where he never could have found you." Maude was started. "You did what you could, Brien, you made me feel--without a word being said-- that you understood, that you were on my side. That may not sound like much, but it was." "If I had it to do over again . . ." His smile held no humor, just a disarming flash of self-mockery. "I suppose I'd do the same, however much I'd like to think I would not. But my regrets would be so much greater, knowing as I do now how miserable he'd make you. I never forgave your father for that, for forcing you to wed a man so unworthy of you--" He stopped abruptly, and a tense, strained silence followed, which neither of them seemed able to break. Maude was staring at Brien, a man she'd known all her life, and seeing a stranger. Had she lost her wits altogether? How could she have confided him him like this ? She'd long ago learned to keep her fears private, her pain secret, all others at a safe distance, yet here in a barren winter garden, she'd lowered her defenses, allowing Brien to get a glimpse into her very soul. Even worse, she'd seen into his soul, too, discovered what she ought never to have known. She felt suddenly as flustered as a raw, green girl, she who was a widow, wife, and a mother, a woman just a month shy of her thirty-ninth birthday, a woman who could be queen.

Henry's qualms about not being recognized now seemed very foolish to him, for he was suddenly sure that his mother would have known him anywhere, on any street in Christendom. He liked the way her hair fell loose about her shoulders, black and shiny like the polished jet in the hilt of his uncle's dagger, and he liked it, too, that she did not pounce on him, swooping him up in one of those tearful, perfumed embraces that squeezed the air out of him. HE did not want her to act like the mothers of his friends. She said his name, making it sound like the "Amen" that ended prayers, and he was drawn forward into the room, straight as an arrow toward its target.

Stretching his legs toward the fire, Ranulf massaged his aching knee and watched the children as they ate their fill, probably for the first time in their lives. IT was Wednesday fast day, but he'd made a conscious decision to violate the prohibition against eating flesh; he could always do penance once he got back to his own world. Now it seemed more important to feed Simon and Jennet the best meal he could, and the innkeeper had served up heaping portions of salted pork, a thick pottage of peas and beans, and hot, flat cakes of newly baked bread, marked with Christ's Cross. To Ranulf, it was poor fare, and he ended up sharing most of it with Loth. But Simon and Jennet savored every mouthful, scorning spoons and scooping the food up with their fingers, as if expecting to have their trenchers snatched away at any moment. And Ranulf learned more than night about hunger and need than in all of his twenty-five years. What would become of them? How could they hope to reach Cantebrigge? And if by God's Grace, they somehow did, what if this uncle of their was not there? They'd never seen the man, knew only what their father had told them, that soon after Simon's birth, a peddler had brought them a message from Jonas, saying he'd settled in Cantebrigge. That confirmed Ranulf's suspicions: two brothers fleeing serfdom, one hiding out in the Fens, the other taking the bolder way, for an escaped villein could claim his freedom if he lived in a chartered borough for a year and a day. It was a pitiful family history, an unwanted glimpse into a world almost as alien to Ranulf as Cathay. But like it or not, he was caught up now in this hopeless odyssey of Abel the eelman's children. In an unusually morose and pessimistic mood, he wondered how many Simons and Jennets would be lost to the furies unleashed by Geoffrey the Mandeville's rebellion.

Ranulf had seen fever scramble a man's wits, but so far, Robert remained conscious and coherent. After he'd been shriven of his earthly sins, he'd made his will, provided for alms to the poor, asked to be buried at his Bristol priory, and sought promises from his liegemen that they'd be as loyal to his son as they'd been to him. He was dying, Ranulf thought, as he'd lived, competently and quietly and with dignity, and Holy God Above, what would they do without him?

Ranulf could imagine few crosses heavier to bear than that of blindness, and it followed, then, that those so stricken would be lost souls, drowning in darkness, tragic and pathetic and helpless. He still thought Rhiannon's plight was tragic. But she was certainly not pathetic, nor was she helpless. She startled him with occasional flashes of wry humor, for humor and blindness seemed utterly incompatible to him. She puzzled him by her stubborn insistence upon doing things for herself when it would have been so much easier to let others help. She made him feel self-conscious, for he had to keep censoring himself, lest he inadvertently say something she might find hurtful or offensive. And again and again she amazed him by her eerie ability to act as if she were sighted.

There was no sleight-of-hand, she insisted, none of the "tricks of the trade" practiced by traveling jongleurs. It was just a matter of learning to heed her other senses, to rely upon memory, and to be patient. She made it seem so easy, and yet Ranulf knew it was not. He no longer saw her achievements as uncanny, even miraculous. But once he understood just how hard-won her victories were, he felt such admiration for her courage and perseverance that pity was crowded out. He thought of her now as " cousin Rhiannon who is blind," not as "blind Rhiannon," and so began what was to be one of the most rewarding and significant friendships of his life

Padarn was studying Rhiannon intently, as if seeing her truly for the first time. "May I ask you a question...a serious one? What is the worst of being blind?" Ranulf had wondered that himself. He expected Rhiannon to need time to think it over, but she answered immediately. "Other people. It would be so much easier to accept my blindness if only they could accept it, too. But they shy away as if it were contagious. Or else they assume that since I cannot see, I cannot hear, either, and they shout as if I were quite deaf." "Or they do not speak to her at all," Eleri said indignantly. "Rhiannon will be standing right at my side, but I'll be the one they ask, 'Has she always been blind?' God Above, but the world is full of fools!" And in the clearing by Rhaeadr Ewynnol, there was none to dispute her.

Henry nodded, then flinched when the woman began a high, keening wail. "I am thankful that we got here in time," he said. "I am beholden to God, and two Hugh de Plucknet for not giving up. I know we won a victory here this night. But I am beginning to see, Uncle, that victories in this war are not what they seem. For what have we truly won? The chance to do it all again on the morrow.

Women are the ones who must bear children, suffering the travails of the birthing chamber, and indeed, often dying to give life. And yet we have no say about what happens to the child afterward. It would never even have occurred to James Marshal to consult his wife ere he dared Steven to hang their son. No more than Louis cared how he grieved Petra by putting her children's future into the hands of a self-seeking lout like Waleran Beaumont. It is so unfair, Harry, so outrageously unfair.

William (Marshal n.n.) gained great credit and patronage by his determined defense of Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine… He was largely supported by royal patronage… serving the Young King (Henry, son of Henry II) on the field of tournament and at court. The latter role may have been the more dangerous: his biographer claims that enemies falsely accused him of adultery with the wife of the Young King; some think it was a romantic invention… If an accusation was in fact made, Marshal solved it as he did later when charges were brought against him at the court of King John: by challenging his accusers to fight, a challenge that they prudently avoided. It is fascinating to note that Lancelot, with a roughly contemporary beginning to a career in imaginative literature, would respond in just this fashion to charges against him. And the Young King, needing William`s martial skills (as Arthur needed those of Lancelot in romance), soon retained the great warrior in his service again.

In 1144, the finished choir at Saint Denis was consecrated in an elaborate ceremony. The king of France was there and his queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. So was Bernard of Clairvaux. All around them was evidence of a new Neoplatonic spirit arising in the Catholic Church, inspiring a fresh appreciation of the physical world. It was the result of a synthesis of Saint Augustine’s belief in the power of love and faith and Neoplatonism’s belief in the power of visible order to bring the human soul closer to God.

You should be side by side, fighting the common foe. You will never know a similar relationship in your life. He is all you have left in terms of brotherhood and you should use him and appreciate him to the full and for your own good and for your mutual gain.