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

by J. P. Reedman

  I nodded. “Taking a man’s lands will always make him very sorry. And what of Baliol, his colleague?”

  “I deemed him to be the lesser evil of the two, the follower hanging on to the hem of de Ros’s cloak. I am inclined to give him a pardon…but only when he shows me the colour of his money.” Henry rubbed his hands, gave me a grin that made him look wolfish in the flickering torchlight. “Think of it, Eleanor. All this new money in the treasury. We shall get that crown for Edmund yet!”

  Chapter Seven

  Katharine was dead. Oh Jesu, help me, my little last daughter was no more.

  Over the past year, Katharine’s health had declined even more. No physician could say what was the cause, only that her troubles went far beyond her deafness and lack of speech.

  She had lain in her bed, unable to move, hardly able to swallow food. The look of sorrow and pain in her eyes had torn into my very soul. She implored me silently for help…and I, Queen or not, could do nothing.

  The King too had been distraught. It did not matter that our daughter would never be wed or have a true vocation. We loved her as God had made her and wanted her to live.

  In a panic, Henry had ordered a silver statue of Katharine crafted by the most skilled silversmith in London, and set it on the shrine of St Edward the Confessor in Westminster. With her nurses Agnes and Avisa tending to all her bodily needs, Katharine was taken by litter from Windsor to the Swallowfield house of her governess, Emma de Spenser, where there were other children her own age that the doctors thought might cheer her. She seemed to rally for a while as a stream of learned doctors went in and out of Emma’s home, and once or twice, I saw her smile or make the small, twittering sound that was her laughter. The King ordered a wild goat captured in the Great Park and brought to Swallowfield for her amusement; she watched it from a pallet, made weak clapping motions with her small, bloodless hands as it bucked and gambolled in the gardens, chased by the able-bodied children.

  The brief respite in her health was not to last. Soon she lost the ability to eat, and would only take fluids from a horn inserted in her mouth. Emma panicked, wrote in haste saying that Katharine must be returned to Windsor at once, that she could not deal with the decline in her charge’s condition. And so Katharine was moved, lying as still and silent as if she were already dead, her nurses snuffling tearfully beside her litter

  She lingered a few days, curled like an unopened flower on the linen sheets of her bed, fair-smelling roses sprinkled about her to sweeten the air she breathed. Then, on the third day in May, just after that wild raucous night when the commons leap the fires in the woodlands and young maids wear garlands in their hair, that time when all the world comes to life, field and furrow, man and woman, Katharine breathed her last. The passing bell tolled over Windsor, and all knelt, crossed themselves and prayed for her soul.

  Katharine was taken from me, embalmed and wrapped in layers of cere cloth. The King ordered her buried in his beloved Westminster Abbey, while a silvered effigy showing her in the guise of her namesake St Katherine was to be fashioned and placed above her tiny grave.

  I could not bear it.

  Never had I felt such pain; it was if swords stabbed into my heart day and night. “You must eat, your Grace.” Willelma tried to comfort me, to push a tray of sweetmeats in my direction. “You have grown so thin.”

  “I care not if I live or die, Willelma,” I told the old lady-in-waiting “I know these are wicked words, and an affront to God, but it is how I feel in my heart of hearts. For me, it is as if the sun has fallen from the heavens and I sit in eternal night.”

  “But what of your other children, your Grace? They need you.”

  “They are all growing up; some are married already as you know. They have no need of me. Katharine had need of me, yet in the end I could do nothing to save her.”

  “It is God’s will,” said Willelma softly, “you must remember that, my Lady. God wished for beautiful Katharine to dwell amongst the angels. She was an angel, sent to earth for but a brief time.”

  “Sometimes…” my tears began to fall, as they did daily since Katharine died, “sometimes I hate God.”

  Willelma was stunned into silence by my blasphemy. She crossed herself once…then again. “I will get the doctor for you, your Grace. I fear you are ill…very ill.”

  “I am not ill…but do as you wish, Willelma!” I snapped at her, and put my aching, tortured head into my hands. My rings caught the long, unbrushed strands of my dark hair, ripping them out; I cared nothing for the pain. I must have looked a madwoman, my eyes swollen and red, my hair a wild snarl.

  But it turned out Willelma was right. I was ill.

  Soon a fever raged within me, a fever that assailed both mind and body. Drenched in sweat, screaming against demons that haunted me, clawing for my soul, I was carried to my bed. I railed against God, and begged for the peace of death as the physicians tried to minister to me and bring the fever down. My ladies gathered around, weeping, brave Margaret, wiping my brow with rosewater and Willelma and Christiana saying noisy prayers as rosary beads clacked through their shaking fingers.

  Through the haze of illness, I heard a voice speaking, gabbling in the gloom like geese. “It is bad news…bad news indeed.” A man’s voice, solemn at the grave.

  “The Queen must not be disturbed by any more troubles!” Willelma’s voice was sharp as a whip, protective. “Do you not see how it is with her?”

  “She must be told.”

  I struggled to rise amidst the froth of pillows, dank with the sweat that flowed like water from my pores. Something wrong…my children…what of my other children?

  “There is surely nothing she need be told that is so pressing it must be brought to her sick bed!” Out of a blurred eye, I saw Sybil approach the messenger, her jaw set and determined, as if she would push him back out of the room, no matter how urgent his business. “Come back when the doctors say she is recovering!”

  The man swallowed. “Lady Giffard, it is the King…”

  “What about the King?” Sybil’s brows lifted, but her voice held the hint of a fearful quiver.

  “His Grace is ill with the same malady as the Queen, and has taken to his bed. He barely knows himself, and moans in agony. Before he fell senseless, he said he had the Lady Katharine much on his mind. The physicians fear for his life, lady, and the Queen must be told.”

  “The Queen must rest!” snapped Sybil. “You will kill her with this news! Be gone, man. Be gone!”

  I lay in misery, listening in a daze to this exchange, my hair falling in soaked ropes around me, unable to respond to the conversation between Sybil and the messenger. Henry was ill! Henry, the King of England, was dying of heartsickness over the death of our little daughter.

  And I knew this evil could not be allowed to happen. Edward was too young to rule a country as yet. He was not ready.

  With an effort, I suddenly sat up, pushing myself upright on my elbows. Groaning with the pain of my wasted, aching muscles, I swung my frail legs over the side of the bed. Willelma and Roburga both uttered little shrieks and tried to swathe me in the bedclothes. “You must not move, Lady. Let me get you some water!” cried Willelma.

  “I have lain in bed too long,” I gasped. “I have heard everything. I must go to the King, who needs me more than at any other time! My ladies, dress me and make me presentable. Messenger…” I gestured with shaking hand to the open-mouthed man standing near the door. “Let a message be carried to my husband’s chamber that I shall join him there anon.”

  The man rushed away, and shakily I stood before my women, struggling against the waves of dizziness that rushed over me. “Quickly, quickly,” I ordered them. “I must go to the King’s side as soon as possible.”

  They threw my linens and over-tunic on me, hastily covered my hair. I did not bother with girdles or jewels—I needed to see my husband.

  Weakly I stumbled down the hall, Roberga and Christiana supporting me, striving to keep me on my fe
et. The floor seemed to sway beneath my soles, the tiles whirling into a haze…yet strangely, as I approached the king’s apartments, I began to feel a strange new strength flooding my limbs. The mist of illness and despair was lifting from my brain; the fire that burned my skin and ravished my body was extinguished. Katharine had gone to the Heavenly Father and would never return but I still had a purpose, a duty. I would not shirk my appointed task…as a wife, as a Queen.

  Thrusting past the guards at the King’s chamber door, I pushed my way through a heaving crowd of doctors and attendants with bowls and towels and medicines. “Out of my way, all of you! Let me see my husband!”

  They tried to draw me away, their hands flapping at me uselessly, not daring to touch my royal person. “Your Grace, you need rest. The situation is in hand!”

  I glanced over to where one doctor held a sharp-bladed knife. Below the implement, his apprentice held a large copper bowl. They were about to bleed Henry, to cut his vein and let perceived bad humours out with the flow of blood.

  I did not believe in blood letting, not for the evil that had gripped him, which was born of melancholy. And melancholy could pass without mortification of the flesh…

  “Get out!” I cried at the doctor. “Stay at your peril!” The apprentice, terrified to see his Queen bearing down on him like a mad woman, dropped the bowl with a loud clang.

  The physics all fled, their robes flurrying like a trail of fallen leaves as they hastened from the room.

  I knelt by Henry’s side. His face was waxy, yellow-grey, his brow furrows awash with sweat. He mumbled to himself, a jumble of mostly incomprehensible words. “Katharine…” I heard him groan. “I am a King and have the power of life and death over most men…but I could not will you to live.”

  Reaching to touch his shoulder, I called out his name. He did not speak. Slowly I began to sing, a song of the Blessed Virgin sung to the Christ Child, but with words that mirrored our bitter loss:

  “Always recall in thine heart these three things:

  whence thou came, what thou art,

  and what shalt become of thee.

  Lulley, lullay, my little child,

  lullay, lullow;

  with sorrow thou wendest into the world,

  with sorrow thou shalt go.”

  Henry’s eyelids flickered. “Why do you torment me, woman?”

  “Because I would not see the King of England fade away like our dearest daughter. It is not his time.”

  “How dare you tell me what my time is?”

  “I dare because I am your loving wife. I have lain abed too long…and so have you.” I took his hands, hot, dry. “Rise, your people await you. Katharine awaits you too…in heaven. But your time of meeting is not yet. Rise, because she, so innocent and sweet, would not see her father perish on her behalf.”

  Henry groaned, but he kept his hands entwined with mine. “What day is it, Eleanor?” he asked. “How long have I been ill?”

  “It is the end of May,” I said softly. “You have been bedridden since not long after Katharine died. I have equally suffered but now I wake anew. Our duties call, to God and men.”

  A tear trickled down his yellowed, sunken cheek. “You are right…you are almost always right. I must find strength…somehow. I have four other children. I have you. I have England.”

  “Robe the King!” I ordered the hovering squires, who were gazing at me as if I were some sort of miracle worker.

  The King staggered to his feet, beard tangled, hair matted from the pillow and from sweat, but with a new light slowly dawning in his grief-dimmed eyes.

  My husband had returned to himself, as I had likewise returned from sickness and despair to the realms of living men.

  Chapter Eight

  The Pope was threatening to excommunicate Henry! I could scarcely believe the menacing letters he had received from the Holy Father. It was a true nightmare, as if the shade of Henry’s father John, who had been excommunicated and brought England under Interdict, had arisen to haunt us.

  The problem was Sicily.

  Edmund’s prospective crown.

  We had not been able to raise enough funds to mount an invasion. Richard refused to aid us, the barons turned up their spiteful noses. The fines Henry acquired from Baliol and de Ros had ended up lining other pockets. Henry’s financial obligations to Pope Alexander had not been met, and the Pope was an angry man indeed, for all his heavenly worthiness.

  I had hoped Uncle Thomas might help finance Edmund’s claim, if Richard would not but troubles had beset my poor uncle when travelling in Switzerland. The perfidious Swiss had seized him on a flimsy charge and cast him into a dungeon. While I managed to ransom him, with financial and diplomatic help from my mother and sisters, by the time he reached the safety of England, he was suffering badly from his long incarceration. His limbs were wasted, his ankles raw from chains. I could not ask a man for money when he was so ill he was being carried around in a litter…even for Edmund’s sake. And Thomas certainly would not be leading an army into battle; not then, not ever again by the look of him.

  I also felt uneasy and guilty. Edward and I had fallen out. Over the Lusignans, of all people.

  I had decided to aid in the expulsion from England of Henry’s half brothers, the Lusignans, the other children of Isabella of Angouleme. I hated them all; none were the least like Henry in temperament and he favoured them in a ridiculous fashion, granting them the best castles in the country, where they lived like petty kings.

  While similar accusations were thrown at me over my preference for Savoyard and Provencal kin, at least my relatives were learned and cultured. In my estimation, the Lusignans were no more than piggish thugs. William de Valence, for example, was a poacher who had raided the lands of the Bishop of Ely. After his illicit hunting was done, he then broke into the manor house and drank the Bishop’s wine, leaving the wine-casks open and flowing on the floor in an additional act of careless nastiness.

  In his youthful naivety, however, Edward loved these foolish louts, almost admiring their insolence and, when he got the chance, joining their dissolute ways.

  In high dudgeon, wanting the bad influence on my son to cease, I had gone to Simon de Montfort, to see if the English barons could assist me in removing these detestable leeches. Disloyal? Call me what you will. I truly thought it was best for my husband and son to be away from those wilful, useless kinsmen. And de Montfort was the only man forceful and powerful enough to take them on.

  I must admit, however, it was with heavily beating heart that I waited for de Montfort in secret, hiding in one of my special knot gardens at Winchester. I had dismissed my women; they lingered on the verges of the garden for propriety’s sake, though well out of earshot.

  In the rose bower Earl Simon came to me, brooding as he ever did, his dark face full of that savage fire that had both affrighted and entranced me when I was a little younger. His eyes, ever wolfish, pierced me like swords. His jaw was granite, clean-shaven but dark with stubble…he had ridden many days. He still wore his mail and a dusky blue cloak, covered in grime of the road. “You wished to see me, your Grace?” his voice was as rough as his appearance, still holding hints of his French accent.

  “How is Nell?” I said, trying for niceties, because, I had to admit, he unnerved me, and such trivialities could often give rise to deeper conversations. “I have not seen her at court often and I miss her. I have not even seen her youngest daughter, Eleanor since she was born.”

  Simon cut through any courtliness, any games I might have sought to play that would get him on my side. “I am sure you have not summoned me here to talk about my wife and youngest child.” He used no formalities in speaking to his Queen…and no niceties either.

  Anger at his arrogance gripped me, and chastisement burned on my tongue but I decided, with much difficulty, to hold my peace. One must fight fire with fire. The Lusignans bore the same sort of arrogance as Simon. The Earl of Leicester could be my fire to burn that cancer from the
land

  “No.” I tilted my head and narrowed my eyes in a way I hoped would look haughty. “You are correct, my lord. Let us dispense with formalities, shall we? It’s the Lusignans that concern me. They are running amok in England, and my son is infected by their barbarous ways.”

  His cruel mouth quirked upwards, amused. “You tell me nothing new there, your Grace. Does the King wish for something to be done about these feckless relatives of his? Does he see their true colours at last?”

  “No, sadly he does not!” I said sharply. “That is the problem. He loves the oafs dearly, as does the Lord Edward.”

  Simon’s brows lifted under his thick brown fringe. He was smirking now; I wished to slap his arrogant face. “So…you wish to go against your husband, the King? A dangerous game, my lady, I should say.”

  “I would never ‘go against’ Henry. I love my husband dearly.” My cheeks began to burn. Why did this man always unnerve me so? “I merely seek to remove those would use him because he is blind to their faults.”

  “And I would guess there are some nice Provencal uncles and cousins who might better benefit from the Lusignan kindred’s lands?”

  A shocked breath hissed through my clenched teeth. “You speak far too freely of matters that are of no concern to you, de Montfort!”

  He laughed; it was rich and rolling, thunder on a hot August night. “I always speak my mind, lady, for good or for ill. But…I still am at a loss here. What do you want me to do about the King’s problem relatives?”

  “You have great influence among the barons, perhaps the greatest influence of all. There is to be a parliament held in Oxford. See to it that the great of England vote that these interlopers be cast forth like the feckless devils they are!”

  “Feckless devils, indeed!” De Montfort laughed again, his mouth pursing. He mocked me, I knew it, and I could do nothing to stop him. “I would not like to get on the wrong side of you, my Lady.”