Wild Things Read Online Free PDF Page B

darling and star of a circle of women who set the code of medieval conduct. They were the first to look back at the Arthurian era and immortalize it in verse. Most history texts comment on the sudden rise of music and art and the spontaneous development of chivalric behavior by knights, but few go out of their way to point out that women shaped these changes. The women created a culture that would influence European thought for three hundred years."
    "The women were the cultural influence?" Liz leaned forward with an intrigued expression.
    "Unquestionably. They demanded that a knight be more than a warrior. He must have an appreciation of beauty, of poetry. He must at all times keep his temper and, above all, revere and protect women and the weak. He must be in touch with his feminine side, if you will." I laughed. "The penalty for crudity of any kind was ostracism by the ladies."
    "I'm intrigued," Liz said. "Those were barbaric times."
    "Absolutely. For example, a high-born heiress like Eleanor had to have an armed escort of knights because it was common for lords to ambush such women, carry them off, and either threaten or commit rape to force a marriage. No matter how he managed to get her to the altar once it was done her property was his. Her children would be his. Though her family or betrothed husband might take vengeance through war, the property was lost forever."
    Liz was shaking her head. "And all anyone really cared about was the property."
    "Precisely," I said. "Property and money. And local wars ruined only the peasants because burning their crops and homes was one way to win a war. But by the time the chivalric code was entrenched, the rules of conduct for upper class society had changed forever. This renaissance of civilized behavior was the direct result of educating a certain class of women and then leaving them alone. Men had been going off on crusade for the last fifty years, and when they left town, the women ran things. Castellans and seneschals fortified castles and saw to harvests, but the women set the tone of governance and sometimes sat as judges in the absence of their husbands. This was the world that Eleanor was born into. She was the richest young woman in a society where women had more cultural influence than ever before, a society that saw itself as the pinnacle of civilization with the glory of God on its side. She was already so high in social class that at sixteen she took the only step up available to her — she married the king of France."
    "And ended up married to the king of England — Maud's son. But her first husband didn't die, did he?"
    "Oh no. Eleanor was a divorcee when divorce could only be purchased directly from the pope. At the age of twenty-seven — when I was just beginning to live an adult life after college — she evidently decided to start over with hers. She didn't want to be queen of an already complete society. She was lured by the wild thing needing to be tamed. In this case, Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Normandy and ten years her junior. He had prospects of being England's next king. To a Norman-French woman, England was a barbaric place, badly in need of refinement."
    "A challenge in a dull life," Liz said. "So she divorced her boring husband and married the barbarian."
    I was nodding. "Exactly. She spent a fortune buying that divorce from the pope. The abbes, who guided the naive king of France, were eager to be rid of a headstrong queen who had failed to give the crown sons. She bought the divorce and went after Henry, the forbidden, wild thing. She gave up the Aquitaine to Henry as her dowry and had eight children, four of them boys. Her attempts to raise England to a height of political power and culture that would eclipse France shaped British history for two hundred years. But things didn't go exactly as she had planned. Henry was a far stronger man than Louis. And when it was clear to her that Henry would never give her the power she wanted, she asked for