MY FAIR LADY: A Story of Eleanor of Provence, Henry III's Lost Queen

by J. P. Reedman

  Henry’s jaw stiffened. “Let him not be a turbulent priest…” he growled. “That could end up very ugly. As it did in my grandfather’s day.”

  “I doubt any ugliness will be necessary.” I tried to hide my nervousness behind a veneer of confidence. “He knows he has done wrong, you know. He wrote to me and I have chastised him for his presumption in choosing Wych and rejecting Passelewe.”

  “Has he? Good! I hope he comes to me to humble himself and beg forgiveness.”

  “But…” I walked to Henry’s side, placed my hand on his shoulder, “I must say I agree with Uncle Boniface. I think Passelewe too…harsh for the role of Bishop. He is better at collecting money that praying, while Richard Wych is a holy and learned man…”

  Henry knocked over the sealing wax; squires leapt to keep it from spattering the desk and his ermine-lined robes. “So you are really saying you agree with your uncle? That you think I am wrong in my choices?”

  “I am just saying, your Grace, that Richard Wych seems to me an appropriate candidate for the bishopric. Not so much Passelewe. Ultimately, it is down to you, and no other.”

  “I will think on it,” said Henry petulantly. “I do trust your judgment Eleanor, woman though you are.”

  “Thank you, your Grace,” I said. “Perhaps we could discuss this again later on tonight…within my apartments? We could dine alone…”

  He glanced up at me sharply. “Are you trying to seduce me, woman? To get your own way using your wiles?”

  “My Lord King. You wrong me. I merely want to spend time with my dearest husband, who has been working so hard of late in administering his kingdom. How will we ever have another healthy son if we seldom see each other?”

  At the mention of a son, his face became grave. I knew he wished for another boy, just in case, Christ forefend, anything happened to Edward.

  He peered up at me then sighed. “Forgive me for my neglect, Eleanor. Now…where is that scribe of mine? I suppose I should send a missive to Boniface.”

  I raised my brows.

  “You win. He wins. Passelewe goes back to collecting money; this Richard Wych shall have his bishopric. Are you happier now?”

  “I will be happier tonight,” I said, and casting a seductive glance over my shoulder, exited the room.

  I was pregnant. The King was ecstatic. He was also very frightened for my health and for that of the child. He ordered thousands of candles to be lit before the shrine of Thomas Becket in Canterbury and at nearby St Augustine’s Abbey. Prayers were spoken for the safe delivery of a son. Humbly, he told the Abbot of Bury St Edmunds that he would name a boy-child after the great martyr Edmund if only the child should be born safely.

  I had been very ill throughout this latest pregnancy, unable to eat and as weak as a lamb, and this was why Henry feared for my wellbeing. Nevertheless, when the time came, I was delivered of a male child, screaming and strong, while the antiphon of St Edmund was chanted.

  Immediately there was celebration, and chasubles sent to Westminster in thanksgiving.

  They say sometimes a birth is followed by a death; it is the way life runs, the way the Wheel of Fortune turns. Several months after Edmund’s birth my father Raymond Berengar died. It was not unexpected, as he had long been ill, but the sorrow still tore my very heartstrings. Henry knew well how it would affect me; he held back from delivering the sad news until he had returned from a campaign in Wales.

  But not long after Raymond Berenger was buried in the Eglise Saint-Jean-de-Malte, my husband’s solicitude suddenly turned to anger—not at me but at my widowed mother. “Eleanor, I cannot believe what Countess Beatrice has done!” he roared. “How could she treat us with such ingratitude, after the money I gave her?”

  I flinched. “What is it? Why are you shouting? What has she done?”

  “Your father left all of the inheritance to your youngest sister, Beatrice.”

  “Not entirely unexpected, Henry. She is the one who is unwed and has the least of us four sisters. And what is that to do with my mother? My father wrote his own will; my mother did not write it for him!”

  “It is not the loss of any wealth that bothers me so much; it is that your little sister is now a very powerful heiress. Many men have sought her hand already…and your mother—this is what enrages me—she has gone ahead and procured a match with Louis of France’s brother, Charles of Anjou! The enemy French! To cap it off, your uncles Boniface and Philip have been involved with the matchmaking from the start. I feel betrayed, betrayed utterly.”

  “We can make good of this, Henry.” I tried to soothe him, though my own mind was churning, rattled by the news about my sister Beatte marrying Charles. How could I ease his worries?

  It was a lengthy process, but eventually we managed to strengthen England’s ties with Savoy. Henry made a treaty with Count Amadeus, granting him a thousand marks in order to become Henry’s vassal. The passes of the Alps would be shut against invasion, guarded by a barrage of Amadeus’s stern castles.

  I worked Henry round about my mother. She had made a terrible mistake, I told him. She was suffering too; in fact, far worse than we were. French troops surrounded her castles, and French lords made rules in Provence at the command of Charles of Anjou.

  Henry and I travelled around England, eager to show the populace that the disturbing news from abroad did not intimidate us. It was imperative that my husband not be viewed as a weak, ineffective ruler but as a confident king. We held celebrations full of great pomp and splendour, jousts and tournaments and feasts…but our long journeys from castle to castle, and the banqueting and merriment that came at each stop caused us to fall seriously in debt. The treasury verged on empty; the treasurer’s face was as grey and frowning as a mountainside as he examined the ledgers. But we could not stop spending—the people would disrespect us, maybe topple us…

  Sometimes we took the Lord Edward on our travels, for the commons loved to see the little prince who would be their future king. He would sit high on his well-trained horse, wearing a tabard of Ypres silk and a tunic of camlet, already a tall boy and mature for his age. He would wave while the sun spilled through the darkening gold of his hair and the people threw flowers over him.

  However, not all journeys with Edward went well. When were attending the re-dedication of the monastic foundation at Beaulieu, Edward began to feel unwell. He grizzled at my side, shifted from foot to foot as we were led through the abbey’s eleven radiating chapels; I chided him at first, then noticed the sweaty pallor of his face, the drenched curls sticking to his brow. He was swaying like a leaf blowing in the wind.

  “Edward, what is it?” I hissed in his direction, suddenly alarmed. I attempted to keep my voice moderate; the abbot was on a podium, speaking to the assembly, which include not only the King and his entourage but Sanchia and Richard—Richard’s first wife Isabel was buried at Beaulieu, along with poor little Nicholas, the baby boy that had died at the birth that killed her.

  “I am hot…I feel like I am on fire, Lady Mother!” Edward gasped, clawing at his tight collar. “My throat swells, I cannot breathe…”

  “Henry!” I cried, as Edward’s eyes suddenly rolled back and his knees went from under him. “Edward is ill! Call a physician! Get someone at once! At once!”

  Panic broke out amongst the lay brothers and certain members of our entourage as they saw the prince lying in a swoon on the cold new tiles of the abbey. Edward’s attendants ran to him and lifting him on to a makeshift bier, carried his inert form down the cloisters, with the monks running alongside him, praying and crying out to God for mercy.

  He was taken in to the infirmary and two of my physicians who travelled with the royal party at all times, Peter de Alpibus and Raymond de Bariomono, dashed in to attend him. I refused to leave the room, stood by my son’s bier with his nurse, Lady Alice, wringing my hands as the doctor’s assistants splashed Edward’s brow with cool rosewater and the learned men felt his brow and the pulses in neck and wrists. Edward began t
o come to consciousness, which brought a rush of relief to all of those assembled, but his skin was blotched by some kind of hideous, growing rash that spread and deepened even as we watched.

  “How serious is it?” I grasped Bariomono’s dangling sleeve, dragged him in my direction with a strength that must have shocked him—he nearly fell over. “Tell me the truth and do not hold back. I must know what ails my son, even if you must tell me the worst.”

  “My colleague, Dr Alpibus, and I believe it is one of the many childhood maladies,” Raymond de Bariomono replied gravely, recovering his equilibrium.

  “Not the pox, please tell me it is not the pox!” Fearful sweat broke upon my brow; I had seen those whose faces had been scarred by the devastation of the pox. If they lived.

  “I think not,” said Dr Bariomono. “It is more likely to be mezils. However, it is still a serious illness, without doubt. The prince must be bled and he must not be moved. He needs to stay in quarantine here for around twenty days, and he must rest another twenty after that while he mends. A monastery will be a fitting place for his lordship to regain his good health.”

  The abbot of Beaulieu, Azo of Gisors, was standing in the room behind me; I had hardly noticed his intrusion such was my concern for Edward. “Fear not, your Grace,” he said. “The brothers at Beaulieu will take great care of the Lord Edward while he is ill. You can go upon your way assured of that.”

  “Go upon my way!” I flared. “You must be mad, lord abbot! I am not leaving my son! I am staying here while he is unwell. The King can go on. I will stay!”

  Abbot Azo looked shocked, his jaw dropping in surprise at my impassioned outburst. “Your Grace, what you desire cannot happen…”

  “Why can it not?” Fire flew from my eyes.

  I realised my voice had risen; on his pallet, Edward began to moan and groan, the rash on his face flaring. Not wishing to disturb my sick son further, I grabbed the front of the Abbot’s habit, which seemed to terrify him, though whether because I was the Queen or because I was a woman, I wasn’t certain, and dragged him out into the cloisters, shutting the wooden door of the infirmary firmly behind me.

  “Now you will tell me why I cannot stay with my son. I, the Queen of England.” Defensive, I stood with my arms folded, under the vaulted ceiling with its gilded bosses of wild men and the Tree of Life and Jonah and the Whale. A wild woodwose, pulling his mouth open to release a tumble of foliage, seemed to be sticking a green ivy-frond tongue out at me…or maybe at the Abbot.

  “Your Grace, no disrespect to you…but …but you…you are female!” Azo of Gisors squeaked. His visage was the hue of fire.

  “What of it? Are you not born of a woman, lord Abbot?” I raged at him.

  Azo flinched. “Your Grace, surely you must understand…this House is Cistercian! We are forbidden to have women staying within our walls. Even Queens!”

  “You will change the rules then…just this once!” I said imperiously. “Fear not, lord Abbot, I won’t attempt to ply the wiles of Eve on you or your monks!”

  The Abbot’s mouth moved and he gibbered, as if I had reminded him of all those uncomfortable and sinful fleshly lusts he had given up. His hands flapped like an anxious old woman’s. “Your Grace, I do not know what to say…I must speak to the King!”

  “How dare you try to involve the King when he has so many other matters on his mind? You attempt to override me, your Queen…and obviously have little regard for the prince who will one day be your monarch. Shame on you, and shame upon this narrow-minded, sanctimonious, self-seeking House. God will punish you for your unkindness, I am sure of it! Now get away from me, and let me tend to my sick son!”

  Abbot Azo fled down the cloisters as if a devil was chasing him, his cassock billowing behind him in the wind of his speed.

  I returned to the infirmerer’s chamber, where my son lay, still hot and sweating, half in this world, half in that terrible dream-place I remembered from my own illness in Bordeaux. I caressed his wet brow lovingly. “Don’t fear, Edward, no matter what anyone says, I will be staying with you until you are well.”

  Chapter Three

  Edward soon recovered, and was as well as if he had never been ill. No marks marred his face and he crawled from his pallet and began running around the abbey cloisters annoying the monks as any young boy would. We left Beaulieu riding upon our palfreys, with my guards around us, and the locals appeared in droves to celebrate the prince’s recovery. The monks cheered too—I deemed they were glad to see me gone. I heard later than some of them were dismissed because they had served secular food to us upon saints’ feast days.

  In Windsor, and in a string of castles and palaces across the west, my beloved family lived in what seemed a happy time, even if the coffers were bare and Provence and Gascony still under threat.

  I enjoyed my Wiltshire manors the most, the castles of Ludgershall and of Marlborough, where men said Merlin of the Arthurian legends once lived. Strange arrowheads and ancient bones came out of the huge, conical mound on which the castle stood, so I could only suppose the tales were indeed true. I told them to my children; hoped they would have the same interest in the nobility and chivalry of King Arthur’s court as I did. Certainly, the tales made Edward’s eyes shine brightly.

  Winchester was a regular stop on my travels, with its enormous great hall and ten-foot thick walls. Next to the Great Hall was a little garden Henry had planted for my pleasure, where I could relax with my ladies in the wan English sunshine and do needlework or play chess or read one of the romances I had bought from William of Paris. A bronze fountain spilled water into a copper basin, there were turf seats and wall embrasures to sit in, and trellises made of interwoven withies where roses and other flowers climbed. Strawberries grew in the beds in season, along with bay, mint, vervain, rosemary and other herbs.

  When the weather would not allow the joys of the garden, I would retire to the hall’s interior, where I would study the huge chart known as the Mappa Mundi, which hung on the wall of the Great Hall, and ponder its detail. It was a map of the known world, with Jerusalem at its heart. Paradise was there, unreachable, ringed in fire, a civilisation long gone, like those of Babylon and Crete, where the monstrous man-bull called the Minotaur still menaced in drawn form. The Red Sea bled, and Noah’s ark still sailed, and Lot’s wife became a pillar of salt near now-vanquished Sodom and Gomorrah. Egypt was there, roped in by the wending blue Nile, and mighty Rome, complete with a phrase, in Latin, that read Rome, the Head, holds the reigns of the world. In the northern section of the map, lay England and Scotland, surrounded by scaled dragons and images of the four winds, and beyond them a mythic figure from Norway called Gansmir, who raced upon skis accompanied by a bear and an ape. I was fascinated by the long-bearded Norwegian, and wondered what it might be like to ride on skis—would it be similar to flying like a bird?

  Passing on from Winchester into Wiltshire, another favourite residence was the palace of Clarendon, on the road to Salisbury. There I hunted with my mewed hawks in the nearby forest, surrounded by my brightly dressed damsels, Margaret Biset, dear old Willelma and her daughter Isabel, dark-eyed, fierce-tempered Roberga, delicate little Christiana, and the indispensable and practical Sybil Giffard, who rode up from Oxford where she had quarters in the castle with her scholar son, Walter.

  The palace was beautiful, set against stands of forest near the old Roman road. Salisbury’s cathedral spire pierced the sky in the distance, rising through stands of fragrant trees. Beautiful arrangements of pale pink and grey tiles graced the palace floors, and the windows of my two floors of private apartments were filled with fine grisaille glass, allowing in a muted, hazy light that washed across the floor. I called it ‘dream light.’ My private hall extended a great ways back into the building’s core, and was artfully designed so that the eyes of visitors were drawn to the fireplace at the far end, which was flanked by polished marble pillars and crowned by a carving of the twelve months of the year. My chapel had an altar of the same l
uminescent marble, and a painting of St Katherine on the wall, and a gold crucifix bearing the figures of the Blessed Virgin and St John.

  I spent much time in prayer, for rumours were running rampant again and many barons were openly hostile, especially towards any foreign residents of England. It pained me—even after being crowned, even after my success in producing Henry’s heir, I was still regarded as an interloper, a troublemaker, not to be trusted. Henry’s own half siblings were considered unwelcome, as children of fractious Isabella de Angouleme, and even my Uncle Boniface came under attack, although the dislike the English felt for him was partly of his own making. He had been unwise in his stern criticism of the canons of St Bartholomew’s in London, and this caused a row with the tough old prior. It had come to blows, and Uncle had drawn his sword and had to be restrained from killing the venerable churchman. London—and the rest of the country—had not forgotten his sudden eruption of violence.

  It wasn’t just rumours and unrest that troubled me. I was also worried about Edmund, my younger son, the much longed for second prince. He was far more sickly than his brother and two sisters; a solemn-faced, pallid child with big haunted eyes and a poor appetite. He seldom travelled with me but remained with his nurses in Windsor. I called my own doctors to tend him and brought him gifts to make him feel better…little toys and silk tunics and some sticks of sweet barley sugar, which he loved to chew on.

  Then my sister Marguerite’s husband, King Louis, went abroad on crusade. Thibaud, King of Navarre, a man of greater girth than sense, started encouraging the Gascon lords to go on the rampage in Louis’s absence, sacking other men’s castles and setting the land aflame. My uncle Gaston de Bearn, renowned for his fighting skills, fought back with a fury, aided by the might of Castile. However, he fought for his own personal gain, not to help his niece or keep the lands for England.

  “I will have to send someone out to Gascony,” Henry said to me, frowning. He strode about our chamber, hands knotted behind his back, fretting. “This situation cannot be allowed to continue. As much as Louis and his Frenchmen have caused me grief, at least they kept the peace.”