The Queen's Pawn

by Christy English

  I did not speak again, for already I had said too much. A French princess lives her life in silence, as my mother had done before me. I was not naturally silent, but I was obedient. I knew that I would serve my father better now by holding my tongue.

  I thought that he would dismiss me then, my duty acknowledged, all gossip of devils and their spawn cast aside. Instead, my father raised his hand from where it rested on my veil and, with a gesture, dismissed the courtiers around us, and King Henry’s vassal with them.

  “Leave us,” my father said.

  The room was cleared in a moment. The ladies who had brought me were the last to leave. They were scolded by my father’s chamberlain for letting me get away from them in the first place.

  Once we were alone, my father sat down, not on his throne, but on a cushion on one of the dais’ shallow steps.

  I realized that the cushion had been set there for me to kneel on. I had knelt early, not having been coached. The ceremony making me countess, and all that came after it, had been accomplished below the dais altogether.

  My father gestured to me, and I went to him. He took my hand in his. His skin was like old vellum, soft and almost yellow. I prayed to God, standing there before him, that he would live long enough to see my brother grown and strong.

  “Daughter,” he said. “What have you heard of the devil?”

  “The ladies said that I was to marry among the devil’s spawn. I knew at once that they meant a son born of your other wife.”

  To my surprise, he smiled. I was glad to see a little light come into his face. But his expression turned grave once more, and I moved closer to him.

  “Eleanor is not the devil, Alais, and neither is her husband. They are both just sinners before God, as we all are. Sinners who do not repent.”

  I was not convinced. I would marry the devil himself if it would serve France. He saw this truth in my eyes, and his hand brushed my cheek. He searched for his next words. He was a man who did not speak much, except to God, and then only in his thoughts.

  I waited, for when my father spoke, he always had something to say. At the time, I thought that was because he was king. Now I know that it was the way his soul was made. He spoke carefully in order to do the least harm. It was his sorrow all his life that, as king, harm came from him as often as mercy.

  “Daughter,” he said. “You are a good girl. You are the pride of my house. I have made you the Countess of the Vexin in your own right, though this title has never before fallen to a woman. Do you know why I did this?”

  “Because I am strong enough to bear it,” I answered.

  I thought again that he would weep, but he was a man. Though he was not great in battle then or ever, he was always in control of himself. I have known many renowned in battle who could not say the same.

  He pulled me onto his lap, and kissed me. I could not remember a time before when his lips had touched me. Though he loved me, and though I always knew it, our family was bound by tradition and necessity. There was little time for kisses or for tears. I remembered that, even as I felt his tears on my hair.

  Once a daughter of the house of Capet is betrothed, she is sent to live among her future husband’s kin. I was ready to face a life in exile among my father’s enemies, for his sake, and for the sake of France. Because I knew King Henry was my father’s enemy; his power stretched far, surrounding my father’s lands. While king in England, Henry was also duke in Normandy and, through his wife, in the Aquitaine. Henry was my father’s vassal, but he was strong. My betrothal was one way to contain the threat of the English king and his many sons, one more way to keep the fragile peace.

  My father drew out his prayer beads, for a set of them was always with him. Today he carried gold beads set with diamonds, pearls, and amethysts, leading down into a crucifix of gold where Our Savior lay, His agony made beautiful. My father gave me these beads, and pressed them hard into my palm.

  “Keep these with you always, Alais. Use them to pray for me, and for France. In this way, you will always remember where you come from, and who your father was.”

  He kissed me once more. I heard his men-at-arms begin to gather by the door. They had come to fetch him away, for he was needed elsewhere, as a king always was.

  He did not turn from me even then, but held me. I looked up into his face and saw that my father was already old. It would be many years or never before I would see him again.

  He stroked my hair and dried my tears with the sleeve of his brocaded gown. The brocade was harsh, and scratched me, but I would not have traded those scratches for kisses from anyone else.

  “Be a good girl, and serve your house always. We will see each other again, at the foot of Our Savior in heaven.”

  Looking into my father’s face, I saw that he believed what he said. When life was dark, and the road of duty and honor was rocky and long, I remembered my father’s face on that day. I remembered how he loved me, and how he was a man good enough to see beyond the evils of this world into a certain paradise.

  Chapter 2

  ELEANOR: FORGOTTEN QUEEN

  Winchester Castle

  April 1169

  The day Louis’ daughter came to me, I was not prepared for her. Louis, my ex-husband. My old lover. My old enemy. The only man I ever left weeping who was not strong enough to hide his tears. Or, perhaps he was simply too strong to feel the need.

  She came to me and stared up at me out of Louis’ eyes. The color was her mother’s, a light brown tinged with yellow. But her seriousness, her gravity, she had learned from him.

  I was alone when she arrived at Winchester Castle. I was surrounded by women, but none of them knew me. They feared me, and loved me, the way a worshipper in a cathedral claims to fear and love the Christ. But none of them saw behind my mask; I would never allow it.

  My son Richard was at my castle at Oxford, as were the rest of my living children, until we left in a few months’ time for Aquitaine. I had borne nine children for Henry, the daughters for foreign marriages, the sons to follow their father. But in my heart, Richard was mine, born for me alone.

  My husband, Henry, had left me years ago in all but name, following the skirt of Rosamund. She was nothing but some knight’s daughter born of a family that had held their obscure strip of land an hour, while my family, descended from Charlemagne himself, had held the Aquitaine for centuries. The thought of that woman, her blond hair coyly displayed, her beguiling, vapid eyes, raised a taste of acid on my tongue. It was said Henry found peace with her, that he loved her silence as much as her chatter. Perhaps he did. For a certainty, he got neither peace nor silence from me.

  From the day we met, all Henry got from me was fire. A fire that never burned, but warmed, and singed his fingertips when he touched me. A fire that kept him in my bed for years longer than anyone said I could, for I was older than he by more than a decade, too old at twenty-nine to catch the eye of a king even when we met.

  But Henry was no king then, only a hardscrabble warrior who would wrest a kingdom away from his mother’s enemy. He was a caged lion, pacing through Louis’ court like some apparition from another world. When I met his gray-eyed gaze for the first time, my husband, the King of France, stood beside me, but I knew that Henry would love me for the rest of my life. Well, I was wrong in that, too.

  But the day he saw me, Henry wanted me, as he has wanted no other woman since. I know this, because I know him. The fact that I know him better than anyone alive on earth is why he took up Rosamund, and even now stays away from me.

  I was thinking of Henry when Louis’ daughter arrived. I often think of Henry, when neither the speech of my women nor the songs of my men can beguile me into forgetfulness. I remembered his great, booming laugh, and his wide peasant hands that could span my waist and lift me as if I weighed nothing, though I am a tall woman, filled with strength. That was why I had loved him well; his strength matched mine, when he chose to use it.

  I was sitting with my women when Alais came to
me. My spy brought word from Southampton when she landed, and another brought word that she would arrive that day. I waited, watching out my window, enjoying the light breeze that rose past the castle walls to caress my face. The rain had finally stopped, and it seemed I could catch the scent of spring, damp earth, and sweet new grass.

  Amaria, my favorite servingwoman, was reading to us from the Book of John. None of my women in England understood the irony of the Gospels being read aloud in my court. Few of the women here would return with me to Aquitaine, where the Court of Love was born, where I had been raised. But if Henry had heard the Gospel read in my court, he would have understood. He would have laughed with me, had he been there. Henry knew better than anyone how little stock I put in religion, and all its false trappings.

  My women were the most educated in Christendom. I liked to remind myself, as well as them, of that, so I had them read aloud in Latin. They read the Gospels, and took in the word of God, and thought me pious, which was the ultimate irony. I simply enjoyed listening to the third language my father called on me to learn, after my native tongue, the langue d’oc, and, of course, Parisian French.

  I loved most listening to the voice of a woman as she read aloud. In a world where most priests could not read, it meant something to me that my women, weak creatures that they were, could do what so many men, with all their strength and power, could not.

  Though my father was long dead, his cathedral still stood. As Amaria read, my other women embroidered a great tapestry that would serve as the new altar cloth at his cathedral in Poitiers. They did fine work, better than any guild could produce, and it kept their hands busy and their minds out of mischief.

  As the afternoon wore on, and the light began to fade, I thought to call on Bertrand, my favorite troubadour, to come abovestairs to give us a song. But I had yet to speak this thought aloud when the castle servants came to light the evening candles, taking the day lamps away

  It was late that afternoon when one of Henry’s fools brought the girl to me. Her wimple was filthy, her silk gown so wrinkled and soiled from travel that she could never wear it again. She stood blinking even in the soft, fading light of my solar.

  My women knew better than to laugh at the girl’s disheveled appearance outright, at least until I gave them leave. But I heard their laughter, tucked behind their teeth, waiting to come forth at the first sign of permission from me. I did not give it.

  The princess looked as if she knew that they mocked her behind her back, that they would mock her to her face if I would allow it, but she did not heed them. She did not even give my ladies the courtesy of a glance. She kept her eyes on me.

  I rose from my chair and faced that girl, looking into my old lover’s eyes. She did not flinch from my gaze, or cower, as I would have expected a child of Louis’ to do. Instead, her brown eyes met mine with a frankness that I have rarely seen, a steadfast gaze that seemed to take my measure, as if she thought to find me wanting.

  The child was Louis’ daughter, but she was as strong as I was. The sight of that strength in another struck down all my defenses. I smiled at her.

  The girl rose from her curtsy. She was a small child, but some woman had had the training of her, for she moved gracefully. I wondered for a fleeting moment if someone had had the sense to teach her to dance. I vowed that I would, if no one had done so already.

  The sight of my smile brought a light into her eyes that had not been there before. She looked on me as a friend, as an equal, though no one had had the effrontery to look on me like that since the day Henry first saw me in Louis’ court. Yet this child met my gaze with the strength I never found in my own daughters, the strength I had always looked for in them but had never seen. I saw it now in her.

  “Welcome, Princess Alais.”

  She curtsied once more, this time not as deeply. I turned my eye on Henry’s fool, and stared him down.

  “You bring to me the Countess of the Vexin, a princess of France, covered in dirt from the road, and blinking with exhaustion.”

  Sir Reginald, although he was a knight of Shrewsbury, did not have the sense to bow again, and I saw that he was one of the men Henry kept about him who thought I should never have been queen. That a mere knight would seek to judge me caught my fancy, when it should have stoked my temper. I almost laughed in his face, but I thought better of it and decided to frighten him instead. In swallowing my laughter, I met the princess’ eyes.

  Princess Alais smiled at me, as if we were conspirators and this man was our dupe. When she smiled, it was as if the sun had risen there in the room. As she watched Sir Reginald squirm before me, I saw that she hated him, that he had done nothing to comfort her on her long journey from her home. He had probably not even had the sense to give her care over to a woman in the evenings, just as Louis had not had the sense to send a woman with her.

  The stupidity of men made my smile widen, and as I watched, the princess covered her mouth with her hand. She tried to catch her laughter, to swallow it down, but as we looked at each other, conspirators together, she failed.

  Her laughter rang out like the sweet peal of a bell, the bell that had once rung from my father’s chapel in Poitiers. I seemed to hear my own laughter in hers, the laughter my father had always drawn from me, as no one else but Henry had ever done. That old carefree laughter rose in me, after many years of silence. I could not catch it, or hold it back.

  Sir Reginald knelt before me then, frightened in truth, as well he should have been. But as the daughter I should have had stepped close to stand beside me, I knew that I would let him go.

  “Get out,” I said. “And don’t ever come into my sight again.”

  The sound of these words gave my new daughter pleasure, and she laughed again.

  My ladies, shocked at my behavior, for once did not laugh to placate me or to join in a joke they did not understand. When I waved one hand, they left, too, so that the little princess and I stood alone.

  “You made him afraid,” Alais said, awe in her voice, as if I had worked some feat of magic.

  I gave her my hand, and she kissed it with reverence. I could not let her fall into reverence with me. I would take worship from anyone else, but from her, I wanted love.

  “No, Alais, no hand kissing, if you please. The man is a fool, and all fools must be laughed at.”

  “It is not so in France.”

  I met her solemn eyes, and drew her ruined wimple from her hair. Her curls were a riot of brown and auburn and maple, soft and fine, but full, with a life of their own. I smoothed her hair back from her face, and almost leaned down to kiss her. I stopped myself, in case I might frighten her with too much affection, and from a stranger.

  But we were no strangers, not from the first. Alais stared back at me with the knowledge of my soul in her eyes, as if she could see through my mask, not only to the woman I was, but to the woman I wanted most to be. I did kiss her then, the skin of her cheek soft under my lips. She smelled of sweat and road dust, and I knew I must see to her comfort. I would leave her well-being to no one else.

  “Come with me,” I said, taking her hand.

  She did not move to follow, but stared at me, all traces of laughter gone from her eyes.

  “You were my father’s wife,” she said.

  She spoke with such sudden horror that I faced her once more. This matter would be dealt with, before we could go on. Alais, it would be better if we both agreed never to speak of the past.“

  She did not obey me blindly. She did not nod to placate me, as anyone else might have done. She gazed at me solemnly, taking me in as few ever had in my life, only Henry and, before him, my father. I saw the wheels of her mind turn as she considered what I said. I watched her love for her father war with her newborn love for me. I did not win that battle, but neither did I lose it.

  “All right,” she said. “I will forget.”

  She gave that concession freely, and I had not even asked it of her. I kissed her again, and she leaned close
to me, like a bird taking shelter from a storm. I did not draw her from the room as I had meant to, but held her close, kneeling beside her, as if she were my daughter in truth.

  We went, hand in hand, down the long dark corridor to my rooms. The torches were not lit at Winchester when the king was not there, and I liked it that way. The whitewashed walls were still wet from the rains we had had the day before, but even now the damp was rising off the stone. The days were growing warmer, and I welcomed the spring.

  I had a boy to lead me with a lamp, as down a long and winding street. He left us outside my rooms, and when I opened the door, I found my women waiting for me.

  My ladies-in-waiting stepped forward, or rose from their chairs to curtsy to me.

  “Your Majesty,” Amaria said. “You come here unattended?”

  “No, indeed. I come here with the Princess of France.”

  Amaria heard the unspoken order in my voice, and she curtsied at once to Alais.

  Alais stood beside me, her hand still in mine, taking my lady-in-waiting’s offering as her due, as indeed it was.

  The rest of my women saw my face, and followed Amaria in their obeisance, before I raised my hand once more to dismiss them. As they left, I instructed them, “Ladies, please tell His Holiness the bishop that I will not be attending tonight’s feast.”

  “As you say, Your Highness.” Amaria bowed, looking to Alais once more.

  The little princess met her eyes, but her face was inscrutable. Once again, I saw Louis in her.

  My women left us alone with the castle servants, who knew my habits, and had already begun to prepare my bath. Alais watched them with wide eyes as those women brought an almost endless stream of hot water from the kitchens, water that I had them heat every day, whether they thought me a witch or not. Of course, no one would have the temerity to name me a witch aloud, not even to whisper it. Though I was separated from Henry, I was still queen.