Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings Author:Amy Kelly The great assembly hall where the duchess once held her courts of love is now used as an antechamber to justice and is known as the "hall of lost footsteps". already in the queen's day it thronged with ghosts, some of whose footfalls had died away in the long past: the ribald, philandering, musical troubadour, her grandfather, with huge laughte... more »r and his inimitable travesties:...her father, fire-eating Guillaume le Toulousain, of the gorgeous appetitie and the reckless imbroglios; Louis Capet, young, wilted with the summer heat, and plainly dazed by his confusing role as king, bridegroom, count of the Poitevins:... the troubeadours of the Limousin and the valleys of Provence-Ventadour, Rudel, Vidal, and many more; Guillaume le Marechal, brave and loyal, leading in her sons triumphant from the jousting fields, the beautiful young king, gallant Coeur-de-Lion, the clever Count of Brittany, with their households of Preux chevaliers, their hair smoothed down with sweet-smelling unguents and their nostrils shaven;... Thomas Becket, with the tall figure and the burning eyes...Thomas the Chancellor..., Archbishop of Canterbury...Saint Thomas...Thomas Martyr! The grim figure of Henry Fitz-Empress on the threshold of her palace hall; the awful ghost of Falaise and Rouen, his spectral eyes still stricken with a horror that was mortal; the ghastly Channel crossings to and from the foggy island on the edges of the world. Salisbury Tower. This is the worm that dieth not, the memory of things past.« less