H. C. Bailey

“ Bran looked at her with his twisted smile. "Aye, ride you back to him and tell him Queen Eleanor is trapped. He will love you for that, your dear lord."
Still Bran looked at her steadily and he said, "Why, cousin, my Queen of you and me, it is Bran the fool I would rather be."
"Oh, I am curst woman!" she cried. "I must ever strike what I love. You are a true man." ”

“ In the hall of the old castle the council gathered, a throng of grey heads and rich robes. And when King Louis had taken his seat the Archbishop of Bordeaux rose from his side and said that their King summoned them that they should give him divorce from Eleanor of Aquitaine, his Queen, "For that he has not confidence in his wife and can never be assured respecting the line that shall spring from her." He stopped, he stood without words. Thrusting through the solemn ranks came a woman, tall and vehement, a woman sombrely cloaked amid the council's splendour, but beyond doubt Eleanor, the Queen. ”

“ To make me his, me and my lands?"
"God have mercy, God have mercy, will you be judged by what lies in the dark of your mind? I think you will go down to hell, cousin. No, faith, what we do is ill enough to answer. And brother Henry he set you free and free you ride."
"And he might have borne me away at his will." She laughed. "The more fool he."
"Yea, yea," Bran looked at her. "Fools are we all, whatever we do."
"Why then, what is in your mind that you give up your lord to ride with the strange woman?" ”