The Queen's Pawn (36 page)

“Your hair shines like electrum in this light, Eleanor. I had forgotten.”

I felt my tears rise then, for all that we had once been to one another, for what we would never be to each other again. I knew, even as my sorrow rose, that my pain was part of our love, just as the joy once had been. Even now, at the end, I would not have had it any different.

“Ah, Henry, soon you will be singing me love songs”

He laughed, as I had meant him to, and my tears receded.

“And would you have me fetch you barley cakes, and apple butter made with my own hands?”

Henry barked once more with laughter, but I heard the seriousness under that. “Dear God, Eleanor, stop it. You are a queen.”

“And so I shall remain, until my days pass from this earth. You know that, do you not?”

Henry met my eyes, his temper dormant. That night I might have said anything to him, and he would have loved me just the same.

“I know that you will try”

I inclined my head. My hand still lay in his.

“You are a queen, Eleanor, and not because I made you one.”

“I am surprised you know it,” I said.

“Ah, Eleanor, I have always known it. I knew it the moment I met you. The day I met you, I knew that if I could make you mine, the world would be at my feet, the throne of England mine for the taking.”

“I knew it, too.”

We sat once more in silence, both taken back to that magic time, when all the obstacles that stood in our way were as nothing: my husband, Henry’s mother, the war he fought for his inheritance. When we stood together, looking at each other in the light of my husband’s court, he had known, as I had, that together we could do anything.

“I love you,” Henry said.

“I know that, too.”

As he stood, even then, he was reluctant to let go of my hand. In the end, I took it from him, to remind him that he had made his choice already We walked a path of his own devising. We could not now turn back.

But at my door, Henry did turn back. He saw me, sitting where he had left me, my green gown drawn around my shoulders against the evening chill. He saw my hair, shining like bronze in the firelight, the silver strands heightening its beauty, the light soft on my face.

“Henry,” I said. “Why did you come?”

“I missed you, Eleanor. I am not myself when you are not with me.”

He left me then, and closed the door. My women did not come in to wish me a good night. Though I had no god to thank, I was grateful, for there were tears on my cheeks. I did not want to shed them in front of another. Not even him.

 

 

As the months passed, I displayed my belly proudly, setting aside all my fears and misgivings, reminding myself to stand fast and to take what comes, as Eleanor had taught me. Eleanor pretended that she did not see my growing belly, but of course, all the court knew.

Henry gave me a cloak made of dark blue silk, the blue of the French royal crest. The deep bell sleeves were embroidered with golden fleurs-de-lys, and the waist was gathered with a fleur-de-Iys clasp cast in gold. The blue cloak was my prize possession, lined in the softest white seal fur; the sleeves and throat were trimmed in ermine.

The court saw me wear that cloak and began to realize that the king was not acting on a whim; he truly meant to make me queen. Only the king and queen wore ermine.

Henry would not let me write to my father. I was to remain silent, and let the king handle all political dispatches. This troubled me deeply, but as my pregnancy advanced, a mental torpor seemed to spread over my mind, and I did not fight for this concession from Henry I knew well that Eleanor wrote to the Continent often, and never asked for Henry’s leave.

In spite of my pregnancy, in spite of the fact that she still had not been removed to Fontevrault, it seemed that Eleanor and I had declared an uneasy truce. That winter, Eleanor smiled at me from down the table, and sent me dishes of squab braised in herbs and butter. Marie Helene brought her decanters of the wine my father had given me, but Eleanor and I did not speak alone.

As my pregnancy advanced, I missed Eleanor more and more. I wished to go to her with questions, but had to settle for the information gleaned from the midwives by Marie Helene. I longed in the evenings, when Henry did not come to me, to sit with Eleanor and have her comb my hair, as I had once combed through hers.

Though I could not sit alone with Eleanor anymore, from time to time, Henry indulged me. One afternoon deep in winter, Henry and I sat alone together, his hand on my belly, his head on my knee. Such times were rare, and I savored them, as I had savored nothing else in my young life, except the lost presence of Eleanor. During that afternoon, I had no fear for my future, no fear that Henry would turn from me. That day, even the pain of losing Richard had fled.

I had brought in a musician to play for us, and the sound of the lute was sweet. For once, with my lover next to me, and my child moving within me, the sound of the lute did not remind me of Richard.

I fed Henry a piece of cheese, for he still did not eat enough to please me. I leaned down and kissed him, almost forgetting that the musician was there.

“This is lovely, Alais. Thank you.”

“You work so hard, Henry.” I lowered my voice so that the musician would not hear me use his given name. “You work long hours to protect me, and our child. You need a time of peace, when we can be alone.”

“Sometimes I think the only peace I have ever known in my life has been with you.”

Henry’s gray eyes stared up at me, and I knew he meant what he said. I kissed his lips, putting all my love for him into it. He tasted of the bread I had fed him, and the English cheddar I had pared for him alone. The touch of his hand on my hair was sweet as he reached up to hold me to him.

“My lord king!”

John burst into the room, coming in past Henry’s men-at-arms, who looked grim. I was surprised that they did not stop him at my door as they should have.

I thought at first that John, like any child, was running in pellmell to see his father. But I remembered then that John was no ordinary child, but a prince of the blood. He was a creature of politics already.

Henry’s hand fell from my hair, and he sat up, looking at his youngest son. He was not annoyed, as I was. Henry knew, even in the first moment, that danger, not rudeness, brought John to us without warning.

I did not move from my chair. Marie Helene came to stand behind me.

“My lord, Richard and Geoffrey have deceived you. They have formed an alliance behind your back, and now they will turn their armies on you.”

John extended his hand and held out a letter to Henry I watched as Henry took it and read it quickly, his face darkening, as if the sun had set in his soul, never to rise again.

Henry’s rage did not surface, as it had always done whenever Richard challenged him. As I watched, Henry grew very still; then he stood to face his son.

“You did well to come to me.”

I saw that he would not discuss the matter further with me in the room. Henry’s gray eyes were far from me, even as he leaned down and kissed my hair. I felt the world as I had known it slipping away. I was frightened when I saw that Henry’s rage ran not hot but cold.

“Alais, I must see to this. Be a good girl, and stay in your rooms until I call for you.”

“Henry, what will you do?”

He turned to me, all the soft looks of the afternoon gone as if they had never been. When he met my eyes, his gray gaze was bitter. I shivered beneath it.

“This is an affair of state, Alais. It does not concern you.”

Had he struck me, I could not have been more surprised. I sat, my belly large in my lap, and watched him go.

The man I had thought would be my husband left my rooms without looking at me again, his young son at his heels. John, while only a child, had his father’s ear. I saw at once that I never would. When Henry left the room without another word to me, I knew that I would never be his partner on the throne, as Eleanor once had been.

As he left to go about the business of the kingdom, as he left to arrest his son, Henry dismissed me, with as little thought as if I had been Bijou, and unable to understand him.

I saw myself in that moment for what I was, a girl who had nothing and no one but a bastard child soon to come. Henry would no more make me queen than God might one day make me pope. I had been a fool. Eleanor had foreseen it.

I had deceived myself, but there was still time. In spite of all I had done, I might still save myself, and my unborn child.

Even now, Richard sat in his rooms, surrounded by the king’s men, surrounded by enemies. Any one of those men with pikes might push past Richard’s guard, and strike him down, as a knight of Henry’s had struck down Thomas Becket.

I faced a choice, and I made it without hesitation, without remorse. Once more, I would step out on my own, but this time to defy the king.

Henry had left me, and Richard might never take me back. Both the men in my life might abandon me, leaving me with nothing. But I remembered Eleanor, and the love she bore her son. If I saved Richard, Eleanor would shield me, even from Henry.

I rose to my feet. “Bolt my door after I leave and do not open it except to the king himself,” I said.

“My lady,” Marie Helene cried as she tried to clutch my arm. She reached for my trailing sleeve, but I slipped from her grasp. I could not stop to comfort her. While Henry would not harm Richard, his men-at-arms might.

I remembered well what Henry’s knights had done to Thomas Becket. They had struck the top of his head clean from his body, leaving him dead and bleeding before the altar of God. If Henry’s knights would do such a thing to an archbishop before God’s very altar, what might they do to a treasonous prince?

I opened the door behind my tapestry It led into the hidden corridor behind the wall of my room. I had never walked that path alone. Always before, Henry had been with me.

I took up a lamp, and stepped into the darkness of that passage, closing the hidden door tight behind me.

Windsor
Castle
February 1173

 

 

Richard and I were sitting in his rooms, whiling away the long, dark afternoon in my husband’s keep, when Alais burst in on us from the hidden door. I could not have been more shocked if she had risen full-blown from the stones of the floor the way Henry’s ancestor was said to have been raised straight from hell. Richard was on his feet in an instant, trained for war as he was. He had his dagger in his hand before he realized that it was not an assassin who came to us but Alais.

“Richard, you must leave this place,” she said.

“Alais.” Richard spoke only her name.

My son had the sense to put away his weapon, but I saw that he was slain already Pain and love lingered on his face, at war with each other, vying for precedence. I saw then that he loved her far more than I had understood. For the first time, I saw that between these two, there were no politics, no talk of war, or lands, or gold. Between these two, they had found something I had never sought. A love based not on necessity, politics, or power but on the simple, personal bond between them. The loss of Alais had cost him not an alliance with France, or the lands of the Vexin, but something that was to Richard more precious.

Alais seemed as struck by the sight of my son as he was by her. She blinked, swallowing convulsively, though she was too strong to weep. As I watched, she rallied, and found her voice once more.

“You must go. John has brought Henry a letter that tells of your alliance with Geoffrey. Even now, the king musters his men-at-arms.”

Light began to dawn behind Richard’s eyes, a light of joy I thought never to see again.

“You have betrayed him,” Richard said. “You have risked yourself, for me.”

Alais reached for him, and he caught her hand. “I will not stand by and let them kill you.”

Henry would never raise his hand to our son. But I remembered Becket, and how Henry’s knights had murdered him in cold blood. I knew that Richard could not tarry here.

Richard kissed Alais’ hand as if swearing her fealty, as he so often had with mine, but he held it longer, and lingered over it as a lover might. She let him hold her hand, but she turned to me. I rose and went to them.

“Eleanor, Henry is coming. Before he gets here, you must forgive me,” Alais said.

“For what, Alais?” I asked, thinking that she meant to ask forgiveness for trying to steal my throne.

“For taking the king’s love from you.”

The princess spoke low, her voice barely above a whisper. I knew then that this was what she feared, the one thing that had plagued her the whole time she schemed to take my place. It was love she craved, love she valued. She served France blindly out of love for her father. I took her other hand in mine and kissed it.

“Alais, you never stole Henry’s love from me. For a long time, there has been no real love between us.”

I saw the question unasked in her eyes, and I answered it. I did not make her pay for it, but gave it freely, gift for gift. For when faced with the choice, she had saved my son. “I have not loved him truly, Alais. Not in many years. Not since long before I met you.”

She came into my arms then, and I held her. Richard dropped her hand, and turned away. At first I thought he was sorry to see her in my arms again, but as he donned his chain mail, I saw him swipe at his eyes. He was as softhearted toward her as he had ever been.

“Eleanor, will you shelter me? Me, and my unborn child?”

My grip on her tightened, and I breathed in the rose scent of her hair. Finally, the war between Henry and myself for the love of this girl was over. Finally, I had won.