Canterbury Papers

by Judith Koll Healey

  And then the mystery of their fate. Someone had flattened them and hidden them under the false bottom of her drawer. No doubt Eleanor herself, or someone she trusted with the secret of the desk. But why? A curious puzzle.

  A peremptory knock startled me out of my reverie. Before I had time to sweep the letters from the table, and without my leave, the door opened. I was about to protest when I saw that it was William of Caen. For the second time that day, he took me by surprise. My open mouth snapped shut.

  It would be difficult for a man of William’s size and bearing to “slip” anywhere, so I cannot say he slipped into the room. But he moved like quicksilver immediately after the brief knock. It was clear he did not intend to be seen entering my chamber. I rose from my chair.

  “Prior William! Uh, Sir William,” I amended, remembering the greetings of his comrades this very morn. He crossed the room to me, unbuckling his sword and tossing it on a low, wide bench next to the wall.

  “Princesse. You are safe now.” He grasped my elbows. All the bonhomie of his early-morning greeting was now absent. His face registered only concern. I was unsettled to see fatigue lines in his brow and darkness around his eyes in the light from the open windows. There was a shadow of a beard on his face, before so smooth-shaven. “I regret that you had to suffer this experience. John will answer for it.”

  “I’m quite well, considering,” I said, forcing cheer into my voice. “I told you at Canterbury that John is afraid of me. He would never hurt me.”

  William dropped his hands from my arms and shook his head. He made no attempt to conceal his impatience. “Must you always show that bravado?” He flashed a trace of a sad smile. “Will you always be that frightened child new to the Plantagenet court, keeping up a front? Can you never say what you truly feel?”

  I was startled. The ground under my feet shifted slightly, as if William were the one with second sight. Then I surprised myself.

  “If it gives you satisfaction, then, here is the truth of it: I was afraid when I awoke at Old Sarum. And after my interviews with John and his queen, I was more so. You were right about John. He may be a fool, but he is a dangerous one. I think he might well have let me starve in Eleanor’s tower if I had not been rescued.”

  I looked into William’s eyes and saw reflected there the morning’s warm embrace in the courtyard with the Earl of Chester. “You sent the earl, didn’t you? How did you know where I was?”

  He turned slightly away from me, moving toward the large stone fireplace. I followed, stepping in front of him.

  “You knew that John planned to take me from Canterbury,” I continued, tracking the logic. “You allowed him to abduct me! And then you sent the Earl of Chester to the rescue.”

  “What did John want from you that forced him to such a radical act?” William edged gently around me and knelt on the stones. He began to fiddle with the kindling in the hearth. His expression was conveniently hidden from my eyes.

  “I thought you might know, since you seem to know everything else.” I instantly bit my lip in regret. He said nothing, laying stick upon stick in a methodical way that only increased my impatience.

  “Information!” I finally threw up my hands and walked away. “He wanted information. Only John would think it necessary to undertake such drama to get information. Why couldn’t he just ask me? We could have had a civil conversation right there at Becket’s altar.” As soon as the words had left my mouth, I knew it was an absurd statement. It didn’t deserve a rejoinder.

  Rumbles filtered in through the windows, shouts of men and the hooves of horses. William rose, frowning. He moved with his peculiar, quick grace to the open windows and scanned the courtyard below.

  “Information about what?” He threw these words over his shoulder. We were like two people on a ship’s deck, our voices divided by the winds.

  “John badgered me for a long time at Sarum. He claims I know the whereabouts of some old letters.” I joined him at the window and followed his gaze. Below us the courtyard was a stir of horses and men, with more pouring in through the gates. A large party of apparent importance was arriving. Beyond the manor house spread the lush fields of Wiltshire, alive with peasants pulling in the greens for our dinner. The rain had ceased, and a multicolored rainbow framed the tall stone gates.

  “Why all the fuss?” I asked, annoyed at the distraction.

  “William Marshal has arrived,” he said, continuing his observation of the courtyard but still addressing me. “What information did John want from you?” He was relentless. “Was it about the letters you thought were behind the altar at Canterbury?”

  “William Marshal! Here?” Then the full import of what he had just revealed struck me.

  “You knew my true purpose at Canterbury all along!” His recalcitrance at the supper with my aunt, his warning at luncheon the following day were now explained. “And you knew that John was after the letters. You allowed the abduction.”

  He shook his head, turning back from the window, his face now composed. “I couldn’t tell you what I knew. Nor could I let you know that the papers you sought were no longer in the cathedral.”

  “No longer… Why not?”

  “You may recall that I tried to persuade you not to keep that futile vigil, even before we found the Arab dead and I outright forbade it,” he said as he moved away, picking up an inkwell from the desk and examining it from several angles before continuing. “I had information that John was nearby, and I suspected he had an idea of your true mission at Canterbury. I knew he wanted to get either the letters or you—or possibly both.” He put the distraction down and turned toward me, the table between us. “But you must tell me how he questioned you. I need to know the extent of his knowledge in order to deal with him.”

  Prior William would deal with King John? Had the world gone entirely mad? I sank again into a beautifully furnished chair and pondered my response. He stopped pacing and threw himself into the chair opposite me, frowning, waiting.

  “John has his own impeccable sources of information. He knew that his mother had sent me to Canterbury.” I paused, seeing again in my mind that impatient, scowling man flipping his dagger into the oak table. “He seems to know more about the letters than I do. As do you.” I squinted at William across the space between us. The long body was relaxed now, his legs extended and the fierce lines in the face arranged in an expression of patience.

  “But I don’t think it was only the letters to Becket that John was after,” I continued. “It’s true, he wants the Becket letters to keep from being embarrassed by old scandals raked up against Eleanor in this uncertain time. But that’s not his real quest. John wants information about a supposed by-blow of King Henry—a bastard he said was born in secret and hidden from everyone. He thinks I know where this child is.”

  “And do you?” William looked grave.

  “I told John nothing.”

  “Did he threaten you?”

  “He bullied me. When that wasn’t successful, Isabelle came alone on the second day to cajole the answers out of me.”

  “And what did you tell her?” His quiet manner had a calming effect.

  “That I know of no such child. That if there ever was such a child, it is surely long dead, since I have never heard of its whereabouts. And that if there is such a child, it is of no concern to me.” Our eyes locked as if they were lances on the tourney field. I wondered if he found a clue to my true conversation with Isabelle in my eyes.

  A door slammed somewhere near my chamber. I heard several footsteps in the hall and a shout in another part of the house. William gave no sign that he noticed. A cool breeze was now coming in through all the open windows. I reached for a shawl for my shoulders.

  “I did learn something interesting from Isabelle,” I continued, breaking the silence. He merely raised his brows. “Eleanor herself refused John’s entreaty to help him recover the Becket letters before his enemies found them, and she has also refused to help him locate the child�
�the alleged child,” I amended hastily.

  “Who would be a man now, if he had lived,” William added softly. “And knowledge of that young man would be invaluable to the right people for the right reasons.”

  “Or the wrong people for the wrong reasons,” I echoed. “So there is a rift between mother and son, even while she is working to save his throne.” I wanted him off the trail of the child.

  “Eleanor doesn’t trust John,” William said in a matter-of-fact voice. “Do you, Princesse?”

  “I don’t think I trust anyone, Prior. Not one of the players on the stage at the present.”

  “I know what you told John. But what do you truly think? Do you think there was such a child?” The question startled me, more for the curt tone than anything else. There was something mildly challenging about his manner.

  “How would I know of such a thing?” I tried to keep my voice even.

  “Oh, come, Alaïs. You lived with Henry and Eleanor all the years of your childhood and youth. It’s certain you would hear court gossip.” He paused and stood up, moving casually back to the fireplace. He was speaking to me almost absentmindedly. “Surely these servants could light the hearth fires earlier on damp spring evenings,” he muttered, kneeling in front of his earlier work and striking flint.

  I waited. He continued in a steady voice, concentrating his attention on the flame that flickered up. “You couldn’t have been that close to the king and queen without knowing if there was another son, an unacknowledged son, that had been born somewhere, at some time. And after Eleanor was imprisoned, you were the king’s mistress. Surely you would have been privy to such information then.”

  I heard, astonished, the words “the king’s mistress” tossed off as if they were a scattering of rice. But they entered me like arrows. Some primitive sound, a groan of woe, rose right out of me, and then my throat closed as if a python had my neck.

  “The king’s mistress? Do you say I was the king’s mistress? Well, you would know, wouldn’t you?” I spit the words out. “You were there with us at court at Winchester, Henry’s clerk. You must have heard the gossip about Henry and me. You probably enjoyed it. Would you like to hear my feelings? Would you like to know how a fifteen-year-old girl felt when her stepfather took her? When she saw the hope of her betrothal shattered? Would you like to know how it feels when dreams of a lifetime crash to earth in a bedchamber in the middle of the night?”

  My voice rose on each question, bouncing off the walls of the room. But I seemed helpless to stop the flow of words directed toward the man who had just touched this dark place in me.

  “Or are you merely interested in the details, like all the others at court?” I was nearly shouting now. “The dirty bed linen, the sly glances of the maids when they brought the bath in the morning. Do you want a description of the eyes and whispers that followed me everywhere once people knew that the king was making nightly visits to my chambers?” I flung myself from the chair, lost in my rage. “What is it exactly that you want to know, Prior William?”

  I flew at him, pummeling his chest as hard as I could with my one hand in a fist, then reaching to scratch his face, that face in which I read every courtier’s smirk of two decades earlier.

  He caught my wrist and held it, but that only increased my frustration. I let out a long scream, a wail that had been building inside me all these years, and he was forced to put his hand over my mouth. He got my nose, too, so that I couldn’t breathe, and that stopped the noise. When I ceased struggling, he released me.

  I was sobbing and could not stop, and I could hear nothing, not even my own heart beating.

  I shook within his grasp as he led me to the bed and was helpless as he gently pressed me to sit. He sat beside me this time, his arm around my shoulder, talking quietly. Then his hand came up to stroke my hair while he murmured as if to a distraught child.

  As I came back into possession of my body, it gradually ceased heaving, and as that noise subsided, I could hear what William was saying to me, as if through a waterfall or from a great distance. “Please forgive me, Alaïs. I was crude in my search for information. I did not mean to provoke those memories.”

  Then he stopped stroking and simply put his hand around on the side of my head, pressing it into his shoulder. He stopped speaking after that.

  I didn’t stir for a long time, more because I could not bring myself to look at his face than for any other reason. I was ashamed of my loss of self and so mortified that another had seen me show the hurt I had covered for so long. I was shocked, too, that feelings I’d thought were put to rest had leaped up in me so readily, like a fire that had been lurking in the ashes of a hearth.

  Finally I pulled away and, without looking at him, made my way to the table, on which servants had laid cloths and water. I dashed cold water onto my face and toweled it. Only then could I turn to William, who still sat on the bed watching me warily, as if expecting another outburst.

  “Enough,” I said. “It is finished.”

  Then William said, in a voice so quiet I hardly recognized it, “Alaïs, forgive me, but I must ask you one final question.” He spoke now in our native French, and I was startled to hear him use the familiar tu, as if our relationship had now been irretrievably altered. “Do John and Isabelle think this child exists?”

  “Yes, they seem to believe it. Isabelle asked me if I knew that the Templars were involved in trying to use this bastard child of Henry’s to unseat John.”

  “Did she?” William murmured, looking past me out the open window again, his intelligent face inscrutable once more, his ice-blue eyes distant.

  “I don’t know what any of it means,” I said, and I threw the towel down on the desk. As I did so, I spied the letters I had been examining earlier. I had forgotten about them in the distraction of William’s visit. I eased around the desk, sank into the chair, and placed my forearm over the papers. I should have guessed that no gesture escaped William’s sharp eye.

  “What, then, are those papers you seek to hide?” His voice had a slight edge. For one brief moment, I considered lying, and then I decided that would not serve. Anyway, the letters were no good to me, in code as they were. I couldn’t decipher them.

  I let out a long breath. “I found these letters in Eleanor’s desk at Old Sarum. They were written in her hand, but they seem to be in some kind of code. I don’t know what they contain.” I gestured with my right hand. “I thought they might provide a clue to this antic chase I’ve made.”

  “Interesting,” William said, rising from the edge of the bed, now all business. “Found in Old Sarum, right under John’s nose and by his very prisoner.” He made a small, amused sound as he walked over to the desk and sat down opposite me. I pushed the letters to his side of the table. He thumbed rapidly through the pages, glancing at the headings of each as if he could decipher the code right there. Presently his eyes narrowed, and something like a low whistle escaped his lips.

  He picked them up, the five pages that seemed to be four letters, and shuffled quickly through them, then folded them in half and tucked them inside his doublet.

  “William,” I protested, not bothering to hide my irritation. “What are you doing? These are my letters.”

  “I’m sorry, Princess,” he said, pulling them out. He spoke again in English and seemed imperceptibly more formal now. “I seem to be singularly lacking in diplomacy today. It’s true. They are your letters. I saw that I could decode them for you, so I made to take them. But I will do so only if you allow it.” He carefully placed the letters back on the desk, but I wasn’t fooled.

  “How can you decode them? Do you count ciphers among the skills you learned in Becket’s service?”

  “It’s not important how. But I can do it or have it done. It’s up to you.” He turned again and began the pacing I now found so familiar. “Tell me how you found these letters. Are you certain they are Eleanor’s?”

  “Who else’s? They are in her hand. I know it well. And they we
re hidden deep in her desk,” I said. “What are you suggesting?”

  “That someone left the letters there for you to find, knowing you would be imprisoned there.”

  I shook my head. “I recognized the desk from our family years in Poitiers. She must have talked Henry into having it brought over for her.”

  “And how is it you came to find the letters, if they were hidden so deep?”

  “When I recognized the desk, I remembered that Eleanor had shown me the spring when I was a child, as a kind of secret between us. No one could know about that false bottom without being shown.”

  “Will you let me take them?” He leaned forward across the desk, propping himself on his folded forearms. I became aware that my nose was running and rummaged in my pocket for a linen square.

  “Who else will see them?” It was probably red, too.

  “Perhaps one or two others; I promise that is all. They will travel no farther.”

  “You’ll return these very letters to me?”

  “Most assuredly. Along with the translation.” He paused, then said, “And soon, at that. I don’t think this code will be difficult to break.”

  I handed them over to him—what choice did I have, after all?—saying, “Answer me this in return: Are these the letters both John and I thought were behind the altar at Canterbury?”

  He took my papers and replaced them in his doublet, this time quite deliberately, all the while shaking his head. “I don’t think so. For years certain mysterious letters were rumored to be hidden behind Becket’s altar at Canterbury. But I myself had a thorough search made last year, and we found nothing. If there are letters from Eleanor to Becket, they must be very old,” he added. “Becket’s been dead these thirty years.”