Eleanor was tall, Eleanor was small . . . .

(The Green Lady, a work in progress)

I like sentences that gallop; sentences that race towards my character. I once tried to gallop and nearly fell from my horse. I say my horse, but it wasn’t my horse; it was borrowed for an hour from a local farmer. I tried some jumping over fences; it was wretched and nerve-wracking. I wasn’t strong enough to hold on. I slipped and slid all over the place.

So I’m practising galloping sentences instead. Here is one below, more than one, about Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. Queens have horses. Kings too. But I’m trying to pin down the idea of Eleanor from history and folklore; the two blend into a spunky sort of gossip. But I think Eleanor was that: spunky, spirited, carried away by defiance, a woman in charge of her own history. In writing to this bouncing rhythm I’m trying to get at that sense of historical legend surrounding her character — adjectives as ideas jogging along from one thing to another — as one contradicts the other, which is the business of rumour, which is the stuff of legend. People make history; our talk, our opinions, they all go into moulding historical characters; and Eleanor is far enough away - she died 1204 aged 82 — that we can make of her what we will. I’m rather enjoying Eleanor’s company. We are jogging along. And just as a horse can suddenly rear its head and upset its rider, jerk its head this way and that, so I’m quite prepared for Eleanor to toss me from my writing saddle — and turn the sentence, along with the legend - in some other direction.

Eleanor was tall, Eleanor was small, Eleanor was elegant, Eleanor was curvaceous, Eleanor was buxom, Eleanor was arrogant, Eleanor was lean. Eleanor was clever, Eleanor was witty, Eleanor sat upon a fine horse and rode out to crusade alongside her husband (the first), Louis. Eleanor was cruel. She got rid of Louis. What would she be wanting with him after all? Quiet, monkish, no fun at all.

For Sarah, who I suspect likes Queens.