The Queen's Pawn (11 page)

The men speculated about Richard’s sudden rise to power. Here, at the king’s high table, sat his ministers. These men helped with the ruling of the kingdom. They served the king closely, and knew well his mind.

“He wanted that duchy for Henry the Younger,” one man said.

The taller man beside me took another piece of venison, and drank deep from his tankard of mead. “Indeed, there is no end to the honors the king would heap on his eldest son. He wanted young Henry to have the Aquitaine, and Normandy, and England, too.”

“Well, it remains to be seen how it will play out. God knows, the king has waited long enough for his sons to honor him. All they do is take, then ask for more.”

My color rose when I heard this, for I knew Richard was no grasping prince. But I knew when to hold my tongue. I ate my meat in silence. Richard did not need me to defend him.

“This matter of the Lord Richard puts me in mind of Thomas Becket,” the first man said.

They both fell silent, and crossed themselves.

The Reverend Mother wept on hearing the news of Becket’s death when I was a child. She had never told me how he died, but there, sitting at the king’s table, I was soon to learn it.

“We know the king’s tolerance for challenges to his authority,” the other replied. “The king’s knights murdered Becket, and in his own cathedral.”

“His Majesty had no knowledge of that and will one day do penance for it,” one young man said. “My father told me.”

The two older men locked eyes above the young man’s head. They did not acknowledge in any other way that the boy had spoken.

I sat motionless, my dinner dagger clutched in numb fingers. I laid my knife down, so that I would not drop it.

Our corner of the table was plunged into silence. Only then did one of the men glance my way and remember I was there, and who I was. He shook his head once, and the other man glanced at me furtively, before looking away.

“Well, it’s all in God’s hands.”

“And the king’s.”

“Amen.”

I drank deep from my wine, though it was sour and unwatered. I tried to imagine what King Henry must be like, that he would order his own archbishop killed in the sacred precinct of a church. I tried to convince myself that even such a man would never turn on his own son. I almost managed to do so, until I met Marie Helene’s eyes.

The fruit was brought out, and a minstrel stood with his lute to start the dancing. Marie Helene squeezed my hand beneath the table as if to offer me an assurance of Richard’s safety, an assurance I was certain she did not feel.

I smiled when a young man from the lower tables asked me to dance. I did not accept or refuse, but looked to the queen for permission.

Eleanor had not spoken to me all evening, apart from greeting me when I arrived in the hall. I saw that in this place she was queen but not ruler. Even with Henry a day’s ride away, his presence was felt at Windsor as if he were but in the next room. I wondered how Eleanor would fare when the king arrived, and how I might be of help to her when he came.

The queen smiled when she saw the request in my eyes, and beneath her court reserve, the Eleanor I knew peeked out at me. She made a great show of being delighted with my obedience and modesty, so that all might take note of it. I filled my role as if born to it, as indeed I was, and it became a game between us.

When each man asked me to dance, I would wait and catch her eye, so that she might nod and give her permission. I forgot the dinner talk of Thomas Becket and the king’s anger. I lost myself in the motion of the dance, the steps that had been taught to me by Eleanor herself.

The queen winked when she sent me to the dance floor with a particularly good-looking young man. He was a lord from the north, a younger son who had just inherited unexpectedly. I knew from her ladies that he had come to court for the queen to arrange a match for him.

“At least I am spoken for,” I said. “You don’t have to fear that the queen will saddle you with me.”

The young man laughed, his blue eyes sparkling with mischief. He looked over at Eleanor, who was still smiling at us indulgently “I would never be so ungallant as to call your company a burden, Your Highness.”

“Not for one dance,” I said. “But for a lifetime ... that might be more cumbersome.”

He flushed, and I laughed. “Don’t worry,” I said. “She will make you a good match. The queen has excellent taste.”

“The Lord Richard is surely a fortunate man.”

Marie Helene and I left for my rooms soon after. When I curtsied to bid her good night, Eleanor drew me close. “Lead men a merry chase,” she said, “but never let them catch you.”

“Not until the wedding night,” I said, speaking low, so that others would not hear me over the music.

Eleanor smiled her wicked smile, and let go of my hand. “No, Alais. Not even then.”

 

 

My spy network, while still active at Windsor, had to go underground. So I took my waiting women out for a stroll in the forest, that I might do my true work as queen unencumbered.

The great trunks of the king’s forest rose above our heads as they had done since long before the Norman dukes had conquered these lands. Spring was well advanced by that time, and the green of the trees had not yet darkened to opaqueness, but shone with hints of sunlight through the leaves.

We brought men-at-arms to guard us, though the king’s peace was secure here, as it was in all of southern England by that time. Henry and I had seen to that.

Windsor was Henry’s palace, more than it would ever be mine. Though Winchester’s royal seat was held by the bishop, my network found it easier to maneuver there, far from the king’s eye. At Windsor, when the king was not in residence, his ministers were, and they all kept close watch over me.

It was a bond between us.

So to take my spies’ reports, I had to hear them outdoors. Spring had blossomed with May, the month of the Blessed Virgin, as Alais was quick to remind me. I still had not weaned her from her father’s religion. She clung to it as she clung to the memory of France. France I would never take from her, but Louis’ blind obedience to the pope and all his teachings was something I would cure her of.

I left my adopted daughter with the elderly women of my court. She alone had the patience for them. Perhaps it was her convent upbringing; she would sit with them, content to read aloud while they spun wool for hours on end. I left them to it. I put Alais out of my thoughts, for I had the business of the kingdom in hand, business that I wanted her to know nothing of.

Amaria caught my eye. When I nodded, she drew my waiting women away to watch a man on the tiltyard, not far from where we stood. He was one of Richard’s men, a great, brawny specimen that in my youth I would have favored. No doubt he had little talk or music to recommend him, but those things were not what such men were good for.

Only Angeline and Mathilde were reluctant to leave me, but when the young man’s horse leaped over an obstacle on the tiltyard, even they were drawn away, as flies to honey

My spy met me as I stopped beneath a myrtle tree. The river flowed nearby, and I could smell clean water on the air. For a moment, I almost wished that I were free, and a young girl once more, that I might go and sit beside that river, and leave the work of the kingdom to another. Of course, this fancy was nonsense, and I dismissed it as soon as it entered my mind. Still, it was not only Alais’ youth I envied, nor just my son’s love for her. Alais was sweet and unspoiled enough to enjoy a day by the river, with no thought for anything else. I had never been.

My spy, the lady Clarissa, bowed to me beneath the myrtle tree and smiled as if she had come to discuss the young man on the war-horse. We pretended to watch him from where we stood. I bowed my head as if looking at the flower in my hand while she made her report.

“Your Majesty, I bring great news.”

“Indeed. Don’t keep me waiting.”

Clarissa had just returned from Normandy with her husband, where she waited on my eldest son’s wife. I took in the girl’s blond curls and winsome smile, and thought once more how deceiving perceptions are. Though she seemed a pious, empty-headed girl, she and I knew otherwise.

She was a spy for me, and one of Henry the Younger’s lovers. How many other masks she wore I did not know, for I did not ask. She served me well, which was all that concerned us.

“Your son has joined with the King of France in an alliance”

My heart leaped for once at the thought of Louis, as it had not since the first year of our aborted marriage. I had sent a letter by my favorite priest to Louis over a year before, broaching the subject of my eldest son. In that letter, I said nothing specific, only that I feared for young Henry’s soul, and prayed each day that he might be led by a good man to find strength in the Church.

Louis loved to hear lies from me, even now that he never saw my face. I had no doubt that he kept the letter I wrote to him, and wore it close to his heart, beneath his hair shirt. He had loved me when I was his wife, no matter how I humiliated him. He loved me still. I was not above using his love for me to shore up my power in Normandy

“It is nothing formal,” Clarissa said, laughing when Angeline noticed we had stepped aside. Clarissa twirled for me, as if to show off the dress my son had bought for her, a deep blue silk that cost as much as three hectares of land, and brought out the blue of her eyes.

I applauded her, as if we were only at some foolish game, but kept my applause quiet, so that Angeline and her sister would not draw near, bringing the others with them. As it was, we had little time, and I knew it.

Clarissa moved closer to me, taking the flower from my hand with a curtsy. “King Louis has begun sending young Henry prayer books, with political strategy in the bindings.”

I laughed a little at that, and rolled my eyes. Henry the Younger would do better to take his politics from me.

“There is talk that the Lord Henry might spend a week with the king in Rouen, so that they may speak of the Church, and its place in the life of a ruler”

“And my husband knows nothing of this?”

“Not yet. Not unless he has spies as good as I am.”

Clarissa smiled, and her eyes gleamed with the intelligence I hired her for. Of course, Henry’s spy network was just as good as mine, but as one of the pieces on my chessboard, Clarissa had no way of knowing this.

However, Clarissa had a good grasp of political strategy, and she knew as well as I did that any alliance between Louis and my son set a wedge between Henry and his heir, while enhancing my power. Henry had always had his namesake’s loyalty, but once Louis had our eldest’s ear, I would ask him to speak well of me. Before many months, if all went well, I would have power in Normandy through my eldest son, as well as in the Aquitaine and in the Vexin through Richard and Alais.

One more step on the road that had no turning. My sons began to line up, one by one, farther from their father, and a little closer to me.

Amaria called to me then, asking me to come to my ladies, where they clustered like a gaggle of geese. I moved toward them with Clarissa at my side. I could not speak to her long, for her status was not high enough to warrant it.

Once we joined my women, she left me at once with a curtsy, her look of blond innocence in place as if the intelligence behind her eyes had never been. Later, Amaria would slip her a purse of gold. What she spent it on, and how she kept it hidden from her husband, I did not ask. Such things were not my secrets to tell.

 

 

 

When my ladies and I returned to the castle, Richard was waiting for me. I did not bat an eye when I found him alone in my solar. Alais was entertaining the elderly ladies in her own room, and Richard would never go alone among my old women, not even for her, not on pain of death.

He looked like a great bear left adrift on an inland sea. I sent my women away, and held out my hands to him. Though he had defied me by returning too soon, I was overjoyed to see him.

“Mother, I could not leave you to him.”

He did not kneel, as he would have done had we not been alone. Richard kissed my cheek, and I took in the sun-warmed scent of his skin, and the beauty of his youth, like that of a young god. How such a creature had sprung from the last happy days of my marriage was beyond my comprehension.

“Leave me to whom, Richard?”

“My father. The king.”

My son’s face darkened when he spoke of Henry, as it had since he was a child. They had never embraced each other, not as Henry embraced the other boys. Richard held himself aloof; Richard had always been mine.

“Henry is still at Southampton, Richard.”

“No, Mother, he will be here by sunset.”

I wanted to ask the question: if such a thing was true, why had Richard not gone on to secure the Aquitaine, while I dealt with his father here? I knew his chivalry, and knew also that my words would wound him, so I said nothing. For Richard, as for Alais, I sometimes held my tongue.

“I could not leave you and Alais alone here to face him, after what I have done”

I did not point out to Richard that he had indeed done nothing yet. That he needed to go to Aquitaine to actually be invested as duke, and as such was still simply a prince. But he knew this already. I saw in his eyes that he had come back for Alais.

My pain pierced me like a well-honed dagger, sharp and true. I had not felt such pain since Henry first took the woman Rosamund as his mistress, so long ago. Richard thought me faint, and gripped my arm.

“Mother ...”

“I am all right.”

I took hold of myself, and smoothed all sign of distress from my face. My pain lay unheeded beneath my breast. “You must stay silent at the feast tonight, Richard. Leave your father to me.”