“Who do you think would suitable for the job?” I asked, although I already guessed Henry’s answer.
“Richard, of course. He showed great skills in diplomacy on his earlier crusading and he also has plenty of this…” Henry made the motion of rubbing two coins together. He also knows the place well… Did you know, Eleanor, that he fought there when just sixteen? He helped hold the region for England.”
“And that may be the problem,” I said flatly. “You promised him Gascony back then, and reiterated his claim once again after the disaster at Taillebourg. But, as you must remember, my King, we both then decided Gascony should be reserved for our Edward. If you send Richard to Gascony, you and I both know what will ensue—he will demand to be given the county for his services.”
Henry began to splutter; his face suffused with colour. “What else can I do, Eleanor? He is the obvious choice to go!”
“Choose another, I beg you. Gascony is Edward’s. Maybe…What about Simon de Montfort?”
“De Montfort? I thought you had no love of him, wife?”
At the irritation in his voice, I stirred uncomfortably. Over the last few years, as I became friendlier with Henry’s sister Nell, I had grown easier with de Montfort, too, which surprised me. When he entered the room, there was something…he both repelled me and fascinated me at the same time. There was a certain primal magnetism about the man, and when he glared at me with his yellowish eyes, I thought of a wolf. Now, you might not say it would be nice to be gazed at by a wolf, as if you were a lamb to the slaughter, but his lips would smile, belying the hard, pitiless scrutiny of those dangerous eyes, and I would have to glance away. That seemed to just make Simon smile the more. It was unnerving and strange. No other man, not even the King, could make me avert my gaze in that manner.
“He has much experience in warfare” I said slowly, “and would not ask such high payment as Richard. Will you not at least consider my choice, Henry?”
“I will think on it,” retorted the King, “but what does a woman truly know of war and warriors? Go and attend the children, Eleanor; I am sure Edmund needs the comfort of his mother!”
“As you will it,” I said and retired to the nursery, where I gave Edmund some more amber-coloured barley sugar…but next morning I found out that Henry had indeed appointed Simon de Montfort as the vice-regent of Gascony (he refused to be just seneschal—impertinent, but that was proud de Montfort all over).
Richard of Cornwall would be furious; I, however, was rather pleased. Henry was listening to me, and though he was a pompous man, Simon could have no legal hold on Gascony.
“Simon’s captured Uncle Gaston? And is sending him here in chains?” I gaped at the King, stunned. Messages had just arrived by swiftest courier from Gascony.
Henry nodded, crumpling the parchment in his hand. “Yes, it is true. Your uncle should be arriving at any moment. My guest…and my prisoner.”
At that moment, trumpets blared in the inner courtyard. Iron shod feet crashed on the cobbles.
“Indeed,” said the King, “the entourage bringing your Uncle Gaston would appear to be here now.”
We hastened to our seats of estate, beneath their elaborated canopies bearing the Arms of England. I felt quite sick to think of my father’s own brother, no matter what he had done, being brought before me in chains.
The doors at the end of the hall banged open. Pikes bristled like shining, deadly trees. Two burly knights strode into the hall, dragging my uncle Gaston between them, chains binding both his hands and feet, making him stumble and teeter.
Gaston was a heavily muscled man of low stature but great girth; of all my male relatives, he was the most pugnacious and war-like. He wore his hair cropped, and his skin was bronzed from many expeditions in the sun. He had handsome features, like my own father, but they were marked with white scars from various frays. Today, new bruises and cuts made those scars even more livid; he had not easily been captured.
He looked up at me, chains rattling round his wrists, and managed a grin. There were more gums than teeth—he had lost several teeth in his battles, too.
“Unbind him!” My voice burst unbidden from my lips. “Take off his chains at once.”
The guards looked startled, stared uneasily one to the other. The King made a noise beside me, as if he were choking. “Eleanor!” his voice hissed in my ear. “He is a rebel, a prisoner. He has fought against us.”
“He is also my Uncle,” I whispered back fiercely. “He is not a bad man…he is just of a war-like nature that has, this time, got the better of him. Think on it, Henry…What will the commons say if they hear that the Queen’s own kinsman is in chains! What will they think of me?”
“Nothing. You are not your uncle.”
“We share blood. And we are Provencal! Please, my love…let him be released from his bonds. Let him speak to us about what has happened in Gascony before any decision is reached as to his fate. If his answers do not satisfy you then, let him be thrown in the deepest dungeon you can find.”
Silence from Henry.
“Your Grace, I beg you…one chance. For me. Are not my other uncles good men?”
Henry slowly rose from his feet, resplendent in his cloth of gold and ermine. He motioned to the guards. “Remove Gaston le Bearn’s chains.”
A gasp came from the assembled courtiers. The guards looked even more uneasy.
“You heard me!” Henry barked.
A gaoler ran up, bowed, and unlocked Gaston’s chains. They dropped clattering to the flagstones. Unsteadily—no doubt his ankles were raw from the rub of the cuffs—he approached Henry’s high seat, while a row of pikes were levelled at his back in the event he should try to attack the King.
I tried to catch his eye; suddenly he glanced at me, and winked. I knew things would be well then.
Obediently, Uncle Gaston prostrated himself before the King’s feet. “Forgive me, terrible Prince!” he cried in a great voice that rang out to the farthest reaches of the hall. “Spare me, and my sword will be forever at your service.”
“Why should I spare you, Gaston de Bearn?” Henry glared down at the man crouched at his feet, humiliating himself by fawning at his toes. “You have caused great distress in Gascony, and helped make the area unstable. Gascony is England’s. You not only betray me, but bring sorrow to your own niece, who is England’s most fair Queen.”
Gaston lifted his head, gave me another surreptitious wink. “I am a warrior, not a thinker, your Grace. I have been a fool. When fat Thibaud started to encourage lords to fight against each other, I deemed myself no man if I did not join in. I should have thought more deeply.” He rapped his cropped head with his knuckles. “Sometimes I know not if anyone is home anymore!”
A ripple of laughter ran throughout the chamber, and I suppressed my own smile. Uncle Gaston might have been a battle-scarred ruffian but he still had the cleverness of his family on both paternal and maternal sides.
“Will you swear to me, Gaston de Bearn, that you will cease to fight against us in Gascony?” Henry glowered down at the bristling, scarred head.
“I do, my liege.” Another reverent kiss to Henry’s painted leather shoe.
“And that you will return in peace and stay in your castles and molest no one?”
“I will tie my sword into my sheath if need be,” said Gaston. “But I have no castles to return to. Your man, Simon de Montfort, confiscated them all.”
“That is too much, he had no right,” I said sharply, causing Henry to glance in my direction with equal sharpness.
Henry bent towards me. “He had the right. He is seneschal. He represents me.”
“He was far too harsh,” I retorted. “We both know de Montfort can be a hard and unyielding man. Uncle Gaston’s castles must be returned.”
“Only if he swears to be peaceable!”
“I swear, I swear!” said Gaston eagerly, his keen ears picking up our conversation. “I will be loyal to you forever more, you can rest assured.”
/>
“Then…” Henry raised his voice so that everyone in the chamber could hear, “I pardon you, Gaston Bearn. Your lands and castles shall be returned immediately. You will dine with the Queen and me tonight, as a beloved kinsman.”
Gaston returned to Gascony a very happy man, his wealth returned and his castles waiting for him to repossess them. I doubted Simon de Montfort was so pleased, however. His anger at the rebellious Gascons knew no bounds; men of all stations were imprisoned, hanged, banished. Simon hung on grimly to the territory, and complaints about the Earl’s conduct arrived in England daily. Henry grumbled as they were received, one after the other, borne by grim-faced messengers; he knew not what was the best course of action, and I dared not advise him, for I had been the one foolish enough to insist on de Montfort’s appointment instead of Richard’s.
Eventually Simon was ordered to return to England to face trial. His behaviour in Gascony was seen as too harsh, too brutal; an echo of his father’s treatment of the Cathars many years ago. Too many men had perished in dungeons, too many times had the gallows tree had groaned beneath the weight of its swollen-faced fruit. The loss of life was intolerable.
Richard of Cornwall attended the trial, speaking not for his brother the King, but Simon. “You must not arrest or otherwise harm de Montfort,” he told Henry sternly. “He is not a convicted traitor; he must not be detained as a prisoner. If you harm your own man, Henry, the people will rise against you…de Montfort is hated in Gascony, but in England he is decidedly popular amongst both the barons and the commoners. You, brother, are not.”
Stung by the criticism, Henry was furious but he backed down with his idea of charging Simon with many crimes. He remembered well his father John’s various entanglements with the barons and what they had forced him to do.
Simon de Montfort returned, his behaviour unchecked, his manner haughty, to Gascony, and the troubles there continued.
The threats abroad could not take over our whole lives, however. We had a kingdom to rule at home, and children to look after. Our daughter Margaret was now eleven and we had a good marriage offer for her. The counsellors of the King of Scotland, Alexander, a boy of ten, suggested their young lord should marry a princess of England as part of a peace treaty.
I called Margaret to me. A pretty, slim-boned girl, she stood in her pink silk gown, her long brown hair flowing in waves to her waist. Her eyes were pure leaf-green and her lips very red…but her courses had not started yet and she still was very much a child.
With consternation, I stared at her, uncaring that I had been scarcely older when I wed Henry. Somehow, I’d had a maturity that Margaret did not. The thought of sending her hundreds of miles to cold, forbidding Scotland, territory of England’s enemies, did not much appeal to me as a mother. Yet I knew such an alliance would be beneficial to the country, and a Queen should not grow over-attached to her children, who had royal duties to perform.
“Meggie?” I used the pet name her nurses gave her; I would have called her Margot, the short form of Marguerite, which is how I thought of her, but she responded only to her English name, as common as it sounded.
“Yes, mama?” She glanced at me quizzically.
I took her soft pale hands in mine, bent close to her. “You are not a little girl anymore. You are well educated and taught in all womanly arts, are you not?”
“Yes, mama,” she nodded again. “I have had good training from Dame Sybil and others. I know my letters and my prayers, and I can dance and do needlework.”
“Then you will not be surprised to know your father and I have been thinking of a marriage for you.”
Meggie blinked; a little, surprised gasp escaped her lips. “Marriage? To whom, mama?”
“Alexander of Scotland. He is ten, just one year younger than you.”
Her face crumpled and I felt my own belly knot up. What had come over me? It was Margaret’s duty to marry whom her parents wished, as it had been my duty. “You will be fine, Margaret. At least your husband is not an old man. You will grow up together.”
“I do not want to leave you and father and Edward, Bea and Edmund,” she said tearfully. “I like it here in Windsor.”
“I am sure you do…but your father promised Scotland a marriage alliance as early as 1244. He will not break his word. And think, Meggie…you will be a great Queen and bring peace to a troubled land. You want that, don’t you…to be a great queen like your mother?”
“Yes, I want that.” Margaret’s voice was a whisper and her chin trembled. But there were no tears, and for that, I was wildly thankful.
The wedding was held in York. December roared in with its cold snows and gales, but it did not dampen the festivities. Riding under Micklegate, we processed to the Guildhall and then on to the great Minster church of St Philip, which Archbishop de Gray was rebuilding in a new fashion. Tall and golden, it stood out against the ice-blue northern sky, while at its feet the people clustered, eager to see their king and his consort, and the royal Plantagenet princes and princesses.
We lodged in the bishop’s palace to the side of the Minster, and de Gray’s servants raced around like madmen bringing us everything we needed. The streets were so busy with people trying to view the activities that fights broke out, especially amongst those of different nations—many Scots and even French had come to view the wedding—first with quarterstaffs and later with swords. Bailiffs and beadles wandered around attempting to keep the peace, aided by soldiers of the crown.
Henry and I walked through the streets clad in samite decorated with gold braid; we wore our crowns and gleamed like angels. Edward was with us, now a towering lad of thirteen, along with his three youthful companions Nicholas, Bartholomew and Ebulo, all the sons of prominent lords. All four boys wore cloth-of-gold tabards patterned with the leopards of England. All four were handsome and upright, but none could compare to Edward, a header taller than the others, his curling hair like a halo around his princely head, even if its one-time golden gloss was now tending toward brown.
A gaggle of bishops and prelates brought the young King Alexander before us, a thin little lad with soft reddish hair, a pale face, and thoughtful eyes coloured a deep hazel brown. He wore a deep green tunic and a golden circlet on his head. Dutifully, he knelt before his future father-in-law, the King of England, and Henry knighted him before the watching throng, to the delight of all.
Then our daughter Margaret, wearing a gown of imported brocade and a golden belt whitened with clusters of pearls, was guided to the Minster doors. The Scottish King and his ministers greeted her, bowing in respect, and in the presence of the Archbishop de Gray and the bride’s royal parents, the new couple were bound together in the eyes of God.
As the bells boomed from the mighty towers of St Philip’s, sending birds flying heavenward, the underside of their wings glowing against the low winter sky, my eldest daughter was wedded to her husband and made a Queen.
We stayed in York until the end of January, enjoying all that the city could offer, the goldsmiths and silversmiths, the booksellers in the little shops along the bridges. Then the Scottish wedding party, under a heavy armed guard for protection, travelled swiftly northwards toward the border, with little Margaret accompanied by a newly chosen governess, Matilda de Cantilupe, who would see to her education in the years that followed.
I cried that night, though I hid my tears from Henry. Miserable, I retreated to my chambers in the Bishop’s palace, where even the warmth of a roaring fire and a warbling minstrel could not comfort me, so great was my distress at my daughter’s departure.
“Do not weep, your Grace!” said that dear lady, Sybil, handing me a kerchief to dry my eyes. “Meggie will be fine, I am sure of it. She will be a most splendid queen, like her mother.”
“I am being foolish.” Gratefully I took the kerchief, daubed my wet face. “But somehow…somehow I cannot feel happy about this Scottish marriage. Not because of the little King, who seems a fine, intelligent boy…but because of his coun
sellors, his guardians. Ah. Stone-faced, heartless beasts, one and all! They hardly looked at Margaret; she was just an object to them, a means to an end! I hope my fears are but the foolishness of a too-possessive mother….but how I wish I could be with Meggie now to guide her and ensure she is not mistreated!”
I leaned upon the window casement, staring into the swirling darkness outside. A few flakes of snow were falling; I could see them illumed by the rows of torches in the courtyard below, where Bishop de Grey’s men were hauling in kegs of drink and pallets of food. I though how cold it was here and how much colder it would be in Margaret’s new land, in an unfamiliar, unfriendly castle with the stern Scottish lords all about her. Jesu help her, they hardly even spoke the same tongue!
The tears came again. The wind, whistling over the pinnacles of the nearby Minster, gave a sob too.
Sybil gently beckoned me away from the window, while Margaret Biset wrapped me in a martin-lined cloak and Christiana reached for a comb to attend to my hair. Dear Willelma, looking as sad and solemn as if her own daughter had been sent away to a foreign kingdom, stoked the fire even higher, to try to chase the chill and the fears away.
The chill departed. The fears did not.
We returned to London. Henry was preoccupied with further trouble in Gascony and I brooded over my young daughter far away in Scotland. We saw each other only rarely, and when we did, certain unease hung between us.
I went about my business and let Henry get on with his; hence, I thought nothing was amiss when I awarded a living to my personal chaplain, William. He was a pious and dutiful man, and I believed it was a just reward for his service to me.
The trouble was, at the same time I presented the award to William, Henry decided to present the same living to one of his own favourite chaplains. Summoning me to the solar, he went into a screaming rage, the likes of which I had never seen before—and I had seen a few of his rages.
MY FAIR LADY: A Story of Eleanor of Provence, Henry III's Lost Queen Page 10