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

by J. P. Reedman

  And so Margaret and Alexander remained at Windsor, and no matter how much the lords of Scotland grumbled and threatened, they would not be moved. Henry and I made sure the young couple felt most welcome, presenting them with jewels, plate, and fine cloth, and importing the best foods for Margaret’s health.

  She continued to blossom, the child growing large within her…but at the same time, far away in Berkhamsted castle, my sister Sanchia waned in strength, the illness that has assailed her since her flight from Germany taking strong hold.

  In October, when skies stretched grey and geese flew in flocks to warmer climes, their unearthly voices honking over the misted landscape, Richard deigned to visit her, bringing their quiet little son Edmund with him. Richard looked down at Sanchia, who was so weak she could not rise. He seemed to have lost his tongue.

  Swiftly he departed the chamber without uttering a single comforting word, let alone a loving gesture, leaving a frightened Edmund kneeling alone at his mother’s bedside. It was fearfully similar to what he did with his first wife, Isabella Marshal.

  By November, Sanchia’s condition had worsened. The doctors did not know what ailed her, but she withered like a flower torn from the root. Some thought she had a growth at her very core. Richard was informed that she was not expected to survive. He took the news in silence; silence had been his shield from the moment he set foot in Berkhamsted. The next day he galloped from the castle to ‘attend to urgent business’ elsewhere. The business had included parcelling off Sanchia’s land…even before she had breathed her last.

  She did not last long after his departure. With young Edmund clutching her hand, she departed this transient life on November 9. In an elaborate funeral hearse decked with images of saints, she was carried to her beloved church at Hailes where she lay, for a brief time, before the high altar, with the monks of the abbey chanting prayers day and night. Boniface and Uncle Peter were there to say farewell. Richard was nowhere to be seen.

  I dared not attend myself; the encroaching winter had brought new unrest to the south and Henry thought it prudent we go once more to our secure place in the Tower. There, in the chapel of St John, I had a Requiem Mass said for Sanchia, followed later by another in Westminster Abbey.

  It was all I could do. Sanchia, my beautiful younger sister, was beyond my help and in God’s hands.

  Men say that as one leaves the earth, another comes to take their place. It is true, of course, and has been so since the days of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel. On a cold, clear February day, my daughter Meggie gave birth to a healthy girl child. It was not the much-hoped-for male heir to the throne of Scotland, but the child was ‘bonny’ as the Scots account it, and healthy, and proved Margaret’s fertility. The baby was named Margaret, after her mother, and in private Alexander called her Maisie, the Scottish pet name for Margaret, which seemed different and unique to me.

  “I so wish we could stay longer,” Margaret said, as she kissed my cheeks in farewell, before climbing into her litter in preparation for the long journey back to Scotland, “but the lords will not tolerate our absence any longer. Pray we have a safe journey home, mother.”

  “I will pray for you and for Alexander, who has become like a son to me. And of course for the health and wellbeing of little Margaret…Maisie.” I glanced over at the child’s nurses, gazing long at the downy head, with its tuft of reddish hair. When would I see my granddaughter again?

  Then I stood back, and I watched, steeling my face to queenly sternness, as my daughter’s cavalcade left to the accompaniment of blaring clarions. The Lion of Scotland streamed out gold, pawing the sky, and then they were gone.

  My heart felt heavy. Too many farewells, too many partings.

  Another year passed. Henry still fretted about de Montfort, who was holed up in Paris. Although the King and Queen of France knew of our troubles with him, yet he had their ear—even Marguerite’s. Simon was nothing if not persuasive.

  “I cannot rest knowing that he is still out there, spewing his poison,” Henry said to me. “I cannot sleep at night. I fear he will sour my newfound friendship with King Louis, and then all the French will turn against me. After all, Simon is French himself, is he not?”

  “Yes, he is French born…but my sister Marguerite is not. She is Provencal. She will not fall to his persuasive tongue so easily.”

  “So you say, Eleanor, so you say,” murmured Henry, obviously ill at ease.

  “You want to go to Paris, don’t you, husband?”

  “I think I have no other choice. Fear not, I will leave you well guarded.”

  “You will not, Henry. If you go, I am coming with you; it is my duty to do so and there is no reason why I should not do so. I am neither pregnant nor unwell; I will travel with my husband.”

  And so we packed our possessions, our crowns and robes and jewelled collars and studded girdles, and set off for France with a large party of nobles that included a jovial Uncle Peter and our son Edmund, who was chaffing at the bit for some excitement, having lost his chance at Sicily’s crown. Dates were set up for discussions between Henry and de Montfort.

  Upon reaching Paris, Louis presented us with one of his own castles for our personal use during our stay. Hastily, we filled it with our finery and our homegrown servants. Mother, invited from Provence as a mediator, lodged with us, bringing her own household…and many new fashions in dress that I pored over eagerly with Marguerite. England was a bit of a backwater when it came to ladies’ gowns, I had to admit.

  We all wished for a successful meeting between the King and the Earl of Leicester, but it became clear that our hopes were in vain from the moment we entered Louis’ council chambers. Henry and Simon were at each other’s throats from the start, hurling accusations at each other in a most unseemly manner.

  “You would usurp my right!” Henry accused, pointing at de Montfort as if he were a dog.

  “You show yourself to be a tyrant!” Simon retorted, his face suffused with blood. “The people have no love of you!”

  Even mother’s grace and entreating words of wisdom could not calm the two men as they circled each other like angry dogs, then slunk away to their benches, snarling, neither having gained an advantage over the other. Louis sat impassive on his throne, like a carven image of a saint, saying naught, favouring neither combatant.

  This hopeless bickering went on all summer, as tempers frayed and the temperature rose around us. It had become so hot we had to throw all shutters wide in order to breathe easily, and that meant we exposed ourselves to the deadly humours creeping in off the nearby river, which had shrivelled to a rancid brown trickle in the heat.

  Before long, pestilence struck the court. One after the other, men and women fell ill, gripped by pains that churned their innards and turned their bowels to blood. I tried to sequester myself away from the others and ordered my women wave fresh pomanders in the air, and it appeared to work; unlike many unfortunates, I did not sicken.

  But others did, and others died. The old and the very young went first; the castle reeked of vomit, ordure and death. The local cemetery was brimming, the gravediggers busy at their trade, hacking at the parched earth as heat shimmers lifted up like angry ghosts.

  Storms arrived at night, blasting the sky with lightning but still the heat did not abate. Food tasted vile, tainted by rot; I was sure it only added to our illnesses. I spat it out onto my plate and drank wine only; not wine mixed with water as was usual for women, but full strength as for a man. I walked in the castle gardens, noting the dry, cracked ground, the dead vines creeping on the old stone walls. It was like a castle of death in some Arthurian tale…the Wasteland of the Fisher King.

  Fanning myself, with my ladies assisting in the effort, I sat within an arbour, where there was some shade and a few dying flowers to sweeten the rank air. “My Lady…” Margaret Biset rose from the stone bench where she was sitting as she fanned me. “The Lord Edmund comes from the keep.”

  “Does he?” I gazed out between the da
ngling withered fronds, the twisted grey vines that hung over the arbour’s frame. Sure enough, I could see my younger son staggering towards us. Even at a distance, I noticed the whiteness of his face, the sweat that streamed down his brow and soaked his hair.

  “Mother, help me!” he cried out as he drew near, and he fell to his knees on the hard flagstones.

  “Edmund, what is it?” I cried, although I guessed already.

  He clutched his gut, gasping in pain. “The flux, the bloody flux!”

  I put my hand upon his brow. It burned like fire; my palm came away dripping. “Jesu, help us,” I whispered. “Margaret, Christiana, help me.”

  We managed to pull Edmund into the shade and into an upright position. He began to gag and I held his head while he was sick. His hair was so saturated with sweat, it was as if he had been caught in the rain. “Roburga!” I called out to another of my younger ladies-in-waiting. “Go into the castle and call for help. Get the physician and some stout men to carry Edmund to his chamber. I cannot lift him.”

  Roburga dropped a quick curtsey and fled, hoisting up her skirts to the knee, uncaring that any man might see her bare legs. There were few to look anyway; most were hung over chamber pots, being ill, or lying in darkened corners, some near to death. If any of our foes sought to attack us, this would have been the time.

  Porters came. We dragged a half-fainting Edmund back into the keep, and I ordered his chambers be changed to ones with better ventilation. Although the physicians were there, I tended him as I would a sick babe, as he drifted in and out of consciousness. I wished old Willelma was there to help me; Edmund liked her and her knowledge of treatments was night as good as that of a doctor…but she had retired from my service in the past year due to her age. How I missed her now!

  “Your Grace, it is not fitting you do work of a nurse!” one doctor said to me, voice full of disapproval as I handed a pot full of stomach bile to a servant and ordered them to hurl it down the privy…quickly. “You must leave this room, I beg you! You are risking your own health.”

  “He is my son” I spat back, almost ready to grab the piss-pot back from the servant and dump the contents on the doctor’s head. “I birthed him in blood and pain. He is part of me and I will not leave him. Leave me be, or I’ll have you removed.”

  By the next morning, Edmund’s fever had broken. The bloody flux had diminished and the stomach pains had gone. Edmund was still pale and his skin felt clammy, but he was able to sip a bit of wine and hold it down. “I feel as weak as a babe,” he muttered, leaning back on his pillows. “Or an old greybeard in his dotage.”

  “You are lucky to be alive,” I said to him, laving his brow with rose water. “Another ten have died overnight.”

  “God rest their souls.”

  I looked at him, his drawn cheeks, the greyish tint to his mouth. He was too unwell to remain here; if another bout of the flux took him, that would be the end. I wanted him to go back to England to recuperate. The sea journey might be hard in his weakened state, but I thought it a risk worth taking.

  “I am going to send you home, Edmund,” I told him. “Back to Windsor.”

  He began to laugh haltingly, and I thought to cry a little, though he fought to hide this perceived weakness from me. “Home….I must admit I thought I would never see it again.”

  “I will go to your father and inform him at once,” I told him. “You will be on your way home very soon, I promise you.”

  Leaving Edmund in the care of the physicians, I began picking my way down the corridor to Henry’s apartments. The air reeked of dung and bile; the acrid scent clung to every stone, a death-shroud. I strove not to gag and walked on with head held high even though my senses spun like a Catherine Wheel.

  As I reached the door to the royal chambers, a doctor in his long black gown suddenly stopped me. His arm stretched out before me, barring my way in. He did not dare touch me, as it was forbidden to lay hands on a Queen, but he was close to doing so. “Your Grace!” he said a hoarse, parched voice. “You must not pass.”

  “Do not tell me what I must or must not do. I am the Queen of England, and my husband the King is beyond.”

  The man swallowed nervously; I watched a bead of sweat track down his wide, furrowed brow, shining like a slug’s oily trail. “Your Grace, you do not understand. The King has been afflicted with this flux. In the course of mere hours, he has gone from being well to being bedridden.”

  “I must go to him!” I cried in alarm. Henry was no longer young; most of those who had died in this pestilence were either the elderly or the infants.

  “Your Grace, I beg you do not risk yourself.” The raven-black arm before me did not falter. “You have been unaffected by this pestilence so far, and by God’s grace, you will stay that way. I would counsel that you retreat to England until this vile sickness has gone.”

  “I am sending my son Edmund home to recover,” I said, “but I will never leave the King. Never. I will nurse him myself if I have to, just as I did with Edmund! Now let me pass, or by Christ, I will call the guards!”

  The physician’s arm dropped like a heavy stone and I flew past into the chamber. Henry lay abed, sprawled on his back, his eyes glazed and his body drenched with sweat. “Henry!” I called to him, leaning over his inert form. It seemed that he could not hear me but wandered in some other realm, caught between life and death.

  Well, if there was a war on for Henry’s life, Death would have to deal with Eleanor, Queen of England. I did not like to lose anything.

  This was a deadly battle…but one I was determined I would win.

  Edmund was sent back to England, despite pleading to stay when he learned that his father was desperately ill. I forbade him to remain, and he was carried from the castle on a litter and borne away towards the nearest port.

  Henry continued to burn with fever and suffer the devastating flux, although his wits had returned to him. “The pain in my belly, Eleanor!” he cried, writhing beneath the sodden sheets. “I bid you go from me, for your own safety and because I do not want you to see me so unmanned.”

  “The doctor told me I should not be with you,” I said. “I defied him, and I defy you too, even if you are King of England. I will not leave my husband when he is ill!”

  “Ah, Eleanor, I fear I am dying,” he gasped, as a paroxysm of pain shuddered through him. “Call a scribe to me, so that I may make out my will. I promise I shall endow you well, as you have been such a loyal wife to me through thick and thin.”

  I wanted to rail at him, scream that he must not convince himself he was dying, but decided that perhaps to humour him would be better. If he though his affairs were in ordered, he might rest more, which would then aid his recovery.

  “I will call a scribe so that your mind will be put at rest,” I told him. “But you will not die, Henry. I will not allow you to! Do you hear me? I, Eleanor, forbid you to die!”

  Slowly Henry began to recover. With feeble and hesitant steps, he left his sickbed and attempted to walk around the chamber. He could only take a few steps at a time before collapsing onto the shoulders of the squires that supported him, but it was enough for now. He would live. My dearest husband would live.

  However, news reached me that filled me with anger and unease. I dared not tell Henry for fear of the shock driving him back to an invalid state.

  Simon de Montfort had contacted the Holy Father in Rome and sent bribe money. He wanted the Oxford Provisions reinstated, along with our oaths to follow them. While Henry was still in bed recovering, Simon made a dash for England, where he drew the barons together and flung before their startled eyes a document stating the Pope had ruled the Provisions and oaths must stand.

  The barons had leapt to their feet, clamouring for Simon as though he were a king. No one knew if the scroll he hurled down before them was a forgery or not, and no one seemed to care. With most of the barons firmly in his camp, de Montfort, smug and assured, returned to Paris.

  But I suspected, wit
h sinking heart, that it would not be for long. He had set the Wheel of Fate in motion.

  Henry and I began the laborious journey home. The King was still weak, and had to stop many times along the way to rest; once he halted at Reims to visit a shrine where he could offer thanksgiving for his recovery. When we finally reached England, sailing over a frigid December sea, Henry was still so incapacitated by his recent illness that we stayed in Canterbury rather than risk the ride to London on the snow-bound roads.

  As we travelled, more evil news reached us but this time, not regarding Simon de Montfort. Wales had risen in a new rebellion, led by Prince Llywellyn, and many of Edward’s castles there were compromised. Edward was abroad in Gascony, participating in the tourneys he loved so much despite his earlier avowals to spend more time in his future kingdom.

  With a shaking hand, Henry wrote a stern letter, bidding our son to remember his recent promises and return home: This insolence should bring great concern to your heart. It is no time for a boy’s wanton slothfulness. That Llywellyn breaks the truce he swore to brings great shame to you…”

  Prompted into action by his father’s doleful letter, Edward rushed home with a band of mercenaries in tow. By force, he wrest back some of his pillaged castles, but a dam had been breached that was long ready to break, and even my valiant warrior son could not hold back the dreadful tide.

  Simon de Montfort’s presence continued to cast a spreading dark shadow over our lives. His hostile and increasingly violent young sons were at his side, and, to everyone’s horror, Richard’s son, Henry of Almain, betrayed his own family to ride in the company of this interloper. Richard was stunned and depressed by this treacherous defection; he loved the boy too much, had coddled him and allowed him to spend too much time with influential men who had only their own interests at heart.