The Revolt

by Clara Dupont-Monod

Genres: Medieval

Synopsis

It is with a soft voice, full of menace, that our mother commands us to overthrow our father . . .

Richard Lionheart tells the story of his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine. In 1173, she and three of her sons instigate a rebellion to overthrow the English king, her husband Henry Plantagenet. What prompts this revolt? How does a great queen persuade her children to rise up against their father? And how does a son cope with this crushing conflict of loyalties?

Replete with poetry and cruelty, this story takes us to the heart of the relationship between a mother and her favourite son - two individuals sustained by literature, unspoken love, honour and terrible violence.

Release date: August 6, 2020

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 208

Sample

IN MY MOTHER’S EYES, I see things that overwhelm me. I see vast conquests, deserted houses, and suits of armour. She carries a rage within herself that condemns me, and forces me to be a better man.

This evening, she comes to us. Her gown caresses the floor. At this moment, we are like the stones in the vaulted ceiling, immobile and breathless. But what petrifies my brothers is not her indifference, for they are used to being ignored, nor the solemnity of the meeting – everything about Eleanor is solemn – no, what transfixes us, at this moment, is her voice. For it is with a soft voice, full of menace, that my mother commands us to overthrow our father.

She says that she has raised us for this task. That she made sure we grew up here, in Aquitaine, and not in England, so she could teach us the nobility of her lineage. Indeed, is my name not Richard the Lionheart? The time has come for us to assert ourselves. She reminds us that she asked troubadours to sing legends at our births. One for each child. She tells us that here, where we now stand, where we learned to walk, in this great hall of the palace of Poitiers, the spirit of our great-grandfather is breathing his strength into us. You have heard his poems, she says, and the stories of his exploits. And so, my sons, you are armed. You are fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen years old. The time has come.

We know these words. They flow through our veins. Henry, Geoffrey, and I will obey, each for our own reasons. But we are bound together by one certainty: Eleanor can be threatened, she can be defied, and even fought. But betrayed, never. And maybe my father knew this, in fact. Maybe he wanted to wound his wife in her very heart. That idea turns our countries to ice. For in that case, what we must now engage in is not a matter of personal revenge, but the clash of two monsters ready to fight to the death. And we, their children, will be mere toys between their paws.

*

My mother is a self-assured woman. I have absolute faith in her. She owes this assurance to her birth, for she is the Duchess of Aquitaine, raised amid luxury and learning, haloed by the memory of her grandfather, the first poet. For her there is no difference between silk and sapience. She managed her fiefs with an iron hand from the very start. Vassals’ rebellions, harvests, defining borders, settling disputes . . . Eleanor likes to rule, and she knows every alleyway of even the smallest village of her Aquitaine. For she carries her land like a jewel melted into her skin. A powerful jewel: Aquitaine is an immense and wealthy territory, stretching from Poitou to the Spanish border and spilling into Limousin and the Auvergne. The lord of such a land is far more powerful than the king of France. I know that this might seem strange, but in this era that is mine, a nobleman can have greater power than a monarch, if his lands are vaster. That is why the king of France, Louis VII, had to marry Eleanor. She was presented to him. And he fell madly in love with her.

He was fifteen years old, she was thirteen. He had a pure heart, but purity never held much sway with Eleanor. For fifteen years she was queen of France, and very bored. She did not give Louis an heir. She loved literature, he loved the Gospels; she called for feasting and wars, he wished for peace and conversation. She believes in power, he in God.

She managed to have her marriage with Louis annulled – something that a queen never does, ever, any more than a wife launches an offensive against her husband. But that is how it is, my mother is a trailblazer. These are not the words of an adoring child, no, her decisions and actions have no model, no precedent, and ultimately, I believe that this series of “firsts” betrays her long-held yearning for innocence.

After her departure, she set her sights on a man eleven years her junior, Henry Plantagenet. He needed her Aquitaine, the size of a whole country. He became king of England, and my mother was a queen again. This time she had many children, including Henry, Geoffrey, and me.

The outline of their story looks like a beautiful stained-glass window. A blazing royal couple, at the head of an empire that covers England and Aquitaine, surrounded by valiant heirs . . . Balanced in their presence, with my father most often in England, my mother in Aquitaine, and us, their children, quite used to travelling back and forth between them. But also, a flaw. Invisible on the official image, but so deep that it engulfed violence, spite, and hatred.

For my mother thought that she would retain her suzerainty over Aquitaine. That was her marriage contract with my father: she brought him her lands, whose expanse carried real power; in return, he would protect her autonomy, would not interfere in her rule over her domains, and would even, since she loved power so much, involve her in the rule of England. It was a fair exchange. But in the end, these two exceptional beings were not spared the banal fate of ordinary mortals: first being betrayed, and then seeking revenge.

Carried by her assurance, and by the certainty that she would make the best of her destiny, my mother believed she was marrying a harmless creature. But very quickly, the Plantagenet confiscated everything. He treated Aquitaine as he later treated England, like a conquered realm. He changed everything according to his wishes – its coinage, justice, and language, its laws of trade and fishing, the boundaries of the forests – and ignored the rising dissent. The lords of Aquitaine detested him immediately. My father paid them no heed. He revealed himself to be authoritarian, despotic, greedy. My mother was nothing but a belly, swelling almost every year.

Understanding her mistake, my mother set her hopes on the coronation of her eldest son, named Henry like his father. She thought she could rule a little through him, recover her full rights. Many monarchs around us are now in the habit of crowning a son in order to assure the continuity of their dynasty. They initiate him in the exercise of power, legitimise him in the eyes of the people. This happens through a mutual understanding between fathers and sons. The Plantagenet played along and duly crowned Henry . . . but now ignores his presence. This is another of his betrayals. He remains the sole master. He refuses to relinquish anything. He belongs to that strange race of men who are always in company, yet always alone. He has heard neither the anger of the dispossessed barons nor our own. He wants everyone to be subjugated to his will, starting of course with Aquitaine, which my mother brought to him by marriage. The Plantagenet is refashioning the whole world to his glory. But that world includes Eleanor.

*

Today, revenge occupies my mother completely. Ever since she announced the revolt against the Plantagenet, she has been pacing up and down the great hall of Poitiers, marching like a general before her armies. Her long leather belt bounces against her gown. She masters several languages, and I see messengers come and go from distant lands, the emissaries, the allies of the last hour. Coffers full of coins are set at her feet and testers bite them to make sure they are real gold. Voices are lowered. The poets dare not rehearse in their chambers.

I chance upon my mother at sunrise, standing before the table in the great hall. The morning stretches its ropes of light through the windows. Eleanor stands between two powdery rays suspended between the floor and the ceiling, which seem to follow the lines my mother is drawing on a map. Here is my father’s empire, from the North Sea to the Pyrenees. There is no one more powerful than he.

Eleanor’s bracelets clink against the wood. She counts the rallying points, calculates the distances. I see her slim wrists sheathed in silk, the curve of the veil covering her chignon and tumbling down her back. And then a memory rises up. I see that same profile bent over our cradles. From that silhouette came a story belonging to each one of us. Its melody would reach the rafters of the halls and the depths of the valleys of Aquitaine, blending snowy days and Saint John’s Eve, lullabies and battle songs. The years have passed, but those softly sung stories have stayed with us, hanging in our hearts like talismans, made of her voice, her image, the face I am observing this morning, which still has the same worried brow, the same long pointy eyelashes.

My mother does not know that I am observing her. She is a one-woman offensive, her body tense, leaning forward, concentrating entirely on the attack. As children, we already knew her love only as a concentrated force ready to pounce, and this soothed us.

She straightens up. I almost flinch. As usual, I feel a mixture of terror and strength engulf me. She beckons me over, and I know what she will say. When she speaks to me, it will only be to consider the day of the battle. She will talk to me of my father. He has been her obsession, has fuelled her hatred, for many years now. During their official appearances, in spite of the court and the crowds, she would only ever look at him, the Plantagenet. Her wide grey eyes no longer even saw me. And I feel ashamed of this, but sometimes I wish she hated me too.

*

There’s no point waiting for words of love. My mother has never pronounced any. This does not sadden me. My era is miserly with words. It respects them too much to shower them on crowds, to use them every which way. A day will surely come when everyone will talk so much that they will no longer say anything at all. But here and now, words are still an act of engagement. They are so prized that they determine life or death. The knight respects the word he gives to his lady, even if it costs him his life; the lord obeys his oath; war and peace are decided by a single sentence. One must keep one’s word. And so Eleanor never says any tender words to us. She understands their value too well to squander them. My mother hardly ever lowers her guard. She always stays on the edges of her true self, wary, tense, and invites no one inside her.

She has other ways of speaking. I have discovered that she ensures that the apothecary monk is present at each of my training sessions. He prepares his sage balm, verbena poultices, burdock unguent, and other fast-acting remedies, in case I am injured. For my sisters, my mother has ribbons brought all the way from Baghdad, of chiffon so light it melts into their hair. My brother is organising a hunt? He will find a new saddle, of fresh leather, made for him overnight. This is my mother’s tenderness, expressed not with words, but hidden gestures.

Her greatest declaration was indeed a gesture. She offered me her Aquitaine. Aware of my father’s threat weighing upon it, Eleanor gave her land to me. Mine to defend and to honour. I was fourteen years old. I entered the church of Saint Hilary in Poitiers, shielded by the arches with their white arms. The bishop handed me the sword, slipped the ring onto my finger, and attached my spurs. I became the Duke of Aquitaine. I pronounced the oath on my knees, in a strong voice: “Raise up what has been destroyed, preserve what is standing.” I felt an immense happiness. This was the order of things, and I was taking my place within it, the one my mother had offered me.

Then she told me of her kingdom. She wanted to stress its difference from England, “the cradle of your birth, Richard, but a land without a soul, full of rain and misery. No one knows how to read over there.”

In Aquitaine, the dead rise up on the pathways, and fountains can boil while remaining cold. I learned these beliefs. We wear a marsh stone as a necklace. We have to eat fruit under its tree, as a simple way of thanking the tree. The Church may well have marked out the entire country, but for the local people, the colour of the sky has as much value as a sermon. We love nature to the point of being able to read it. Now I know how to look at a linden tree’s bark, to see when the bast is ready to be extracted to make rope for the wells. I recognise the sounds of the different bells, all of which have names. Attacking a neighbour, or even royalty, is a daily hobby: Aquitanians have revolt in their blood. I have quashed all those who contested Eleanor’s authority – since all I know how to do is to make war. I have stamped her seal with the naïve pride of children who know they are chosen.

And of all this colour, nothing remains but a battle plan.

*

Sometimes I manage to stand back, to dissect the disaster. I ask myself, can anyone survive the decision to kill their own father? And why did mine place so much importance on his own desires at the expense of ours? What interest did he have in setting the family against him? For here it is, the irony of it all: hatred brings the family together. Up until now, my elder brother and I had very little in common. I was the impulsive one, and Henry, the haughty one . . . I cared only for strumpets, fighting, solitude. He intends to marry a princess, prefers discussions to weapons and adore. . .