The Queen's Pawn

by Christy English

  I climbed down from my stool gracefully, and curtsied to Eleanor.

  The queen bent close to my table to better see my work. After looking at the parchment for a long time, Eleanor raised her head and stared at me.

  “I did not know you had such work in you, Alais.”

  “Neither did I, Your Majesty. Until God showed me.”

  At the mention of God, Eleanor stepped away from my worktable. “I am glad that you have learned this art, Princess, but what of the other things I ordered you to learn? Do you practice your Latin and your Spanish?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  I moved toward her, feeling her eyes on me as if they were hands, reaching out to trip me. I did not falter. I stood beside her in the sunlight and let her look her fill.

  Eleanor took my chin in her hand and turned my face to the sunlight.

  “You move well,” she said, “though I would teach you different ways of walking. I did not send you here to make a nun of you, but a strong woman who will be the mother of my grandsons.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  She looked at my skin, at the youthful flawlessness of my complexion. I bathed my face in goats’ milk once a day at the Mother’s insistence. I had always thought it a foolish practice, but now, as I stood under the queen’s scrutiny, I was glad that I had.

  I stared into Eleanor’s eyes, and wondered if she had become a stranger. It was then that she smiled at me, and I knew her once more.

  “I missed you, Alais. More than you know.”

  Even then, I did not wrap my arms around her, but waited. I knew it was not my place. It was for her to bring me close, if she wished it.

  Eleanor raised her jeweled hands. She took my face between her palms so that I could not look away.

  “I will bring you to my son. But for as long as I can, I will keep you with me.”

  She kissed me then, and I clutched her as I had longed to do for all the years we had been apart. Eleanor held me close, her strength flowing into me, so that I felt truly myself once more for the first time since she went away.

  Chapter 4

  ELEANOR: THE LARGER WORLD

  Winchester Castle

  May 1172

  The first thing I did, once I took Alais out of that nunnery, was to arrange decent dress. I could not stand to see her in the rags they clothed her in. I thought I had been clear when I left her there, regarding what was due a princess of France. She was not there to take vows, after all, but to be held in safekeeping for me.

  Well, Alais was safe, after all, and clothes could be changed. The first day I came to her, finding her dressed in those black rags, unevenly dyed, I had to make an effort to hold my tongue. I saw how much she loved the Reverend Mother, and how a harsh word from me to that old woman would hurt her. It was one of the first times I held my tongue for Alais’ sake, and stayed my hand. It was not the last.

  I held myself apart from her at first, to see what she was made of. Though I loved her, and would always love her, until darkness took me from this earth, I did not tell her so. I watched her walk and stand in the sunlight. I met her gaze as she searched my cool green eyes.

  She saw nothing of my feelings until I allowed her to, but my heart swelled at the sight of her, sitting there in the sunlight of that cloister garden. As she bent over a clerk’s task, the vellum under her hand became something else, not a book to be read by fools, but a work of art. I stood looking over it a long while. I am not sure whom that prayer book was meant for; I had it bound and wrapped in silk. I took it away with me.

  I do not read it, of course. Hearing the Gospel once, I found, was enough for me. I never listen to the words even when my women read them. But the paintings in that book were a miracle, so small that the largest one fit into the palm of my hand. Those paintings I look over every day. I marvel that the hand of a princess, meant only for what tasks men ordered her to, could make one of these. That first day, as I gazed down at those paintings, the brush still in her hand, I considered what other wonders lay within Alais, undreamt and unlocked for, but by me.

  There were many things to be proud of in my daughter. Her newfound skill at painting was only one of them. She spoke low, her voice soft and resonant. When she laughed, I heard the siren song; it was music to bring men to their knees.

  I knew when I first saw her that she would fit with my plan as smoothly as the next piece of a puzzle fits into its joints. For the child I had left behind me was gone as if she had never been. In that child’s place stood a woman.

  As I looked into the quiet depths of Alais’ eyes, at first I wondered if by sending her to that forsaken place I had gotten only a beautiful nun out of her. I remembered well how she had clung to her father’s religion when I left her there. I was thinking already of how to break her of it when she smiled.

  That first smile was like a curtain lifting before an altar that hid precious things. I got a glimpse of heat beneath that smile, a sense of layers beyond the heat, and strength underlying that.

  I thought of myself at the age of fifteen, how, even then, men had written songs in my honor. I thought of how my father had seen my strength and had left the duchy to me, when my male cousins would have taken up the Aquitaine, and gladly.

  I saw that if I gave my son to this woman, she would know what to do with him. She was strong enough to hold Richard, even then.

  Richard was a man for strong women, as his father had been before him. As indeed, his father still was, though Henry fought to deny himself, and lay down among fools. I took a sort of perverse satisfaction in the thought of Henry taking his first look at Alais, once I had her dressed from head to toe in silk again. It gave me pleasure to know that Henry, too, would fall under her spell, for he loved strong women, especially strong women who knew how to hold their tongues, and who knew also when to speak. Alais was such a woman.

  Alais and I broke our journey to Winchester at an abbey also loyal to me. The abbot fawned on us, offering me his own rooms. Alais looked askance at those fine stone walls, with their brocade tapestries and their sconces of bronze. We ate off gold that night, and Alais was shocked to see such things in a house of God. She did not say so, for my sake, but even after the years we had been apart, I could read her eyes.

  “Alais, surely you know by now that most religious houses are not like the one you come from,” I said.

  “No, Your Majesty. I did not know.”

  “Most royal abbeys are like this one. Full of gold plate, and tapestries, and beeswax candles.”

  “And fat abbots,” she said, her smooth voice belying the glint in her eye.

  I smiled at her. “Yes.”

  The knife she had been given was almost not sharp enough to spread butter on the bread, much less cut the meat. Soon she would have to tear the food with her teeth. I saw her annoyance and laughed, drawing another dagger from my sleeve. “Here, Alais, use this one. The monks did not give you a decent knife because they don’t want you to assassinate me.”

  “I would as soon cut out my own heart.”

  I touched her cheek. “Well I know it. Do not trouble yourself over the assumptions fools make.”

  My acknowledgment that the abbot was a fool calmed her at once. She picked up the dagger I had given her, and started to eat.

  I smiled, watching her devour her meat. The squab was good; in that house, the abbot’s table was always well stocked, as anyone could tell from his ample belly. But I would have known that without seeing him, for I paid the abbey’s bills. Such trifles were the foundation of my spy network. I was always amazed at how easy it was to buy a man’s soul, and how cheap.

  “You might be a spy for France, you see,” I said, sipping my wine. “Your betrothal to my son might be a ruse. You might be here only to kill me.”

  “Why would they send a girl?” she asked.

  I laughed, and though she smiled with me, I saw that she did not make a joke. She was not quite easy enough with me for that. Not yet.

  “
I do not think this, Alais. I only tell you what others think. Those who are not trained to kindness and obedience as you are.”

  Alais met my eyes when I said this, to see whether I teased her, which, of course, I did. Though kindness and obedience had been bred into her from birth, much more lay behind the maple brown of her eyes, and she and I both knew it. She smiled wryly, and the light in her eyes did not dim.

  “You will find that the world is not the place you were told it was in the nunnery. Men are cruel, and women are their playthings.”

  “I am not afraid,” the French princess said, all light of mirth going out of her eyes. Her strength was revealed to me then, unsheathed, like a weapon used in war. I knew she never dropped that mask before another, and I was gratified.

  She looked away from me, her eyes cast down at her plate. She did not eat another bite, nor did she move, but sat frozen, as if waiting for an assassin’s knife. I found myself holding my breath, taken in by her reverent silence, until she looked up once more at me.

  “Where were you just now, Alais?”

  “I’m sorry, Your Majesty. I was saying a prayer for my father, and for France.”

  I do not know what I expected. I myself had left her in a religious house, and one where the abbess had a true calling. Had I wanted to wean her from her father’s religion, I would have done well to send her someplace else.

  I would have her for my own, Louis and his religion be damned. But clearly I would not have her for myself that day. I would lay siege to her piety; I would find a breach in the wall, or perhaps a door. Piety was something I had never understood. In spite of my best efforts, and Henry’s, it had taken root in Richard, too.

  “It is kind of you to pray for Louis. No doubt he needs it,” I said.

  Two lay sisters came in then to clear away the plates, and a third to lead Alais to her room. I took my daughter’s hand as she stood to leave me, and when she met my eyes, all thoughts of religion fled.

  “The world is hard on women,” I said. “You must prepare yourself” For all her religious leanings, she was the girl I remembered, the girl whose strength had called to me from the first, my daughter in truth, grown now into a woman. Her strength shone out of her face, from the depths of her maple eyes, a light that surrounded me.

  “I am ready,” she said.

  I could not bring myself to speak again, but I drew her close and kissed her. She did not cling to me, for as I have said, she was a woman already, but she seemed to know that I needed her touch. Alais held me until I rallied my own strength, and let her go.

  When we arrived in Winchester the next day, Richard was there before me. I took joy in seeing his standard flying above my keep. I knew that soon I would give him a different standard, and he would be able to fly that as well, wherever he went.

  Winchester gleamed white in the morning sun as we rode up before it. Though our litters were slow, I savored the time it took to reach the castle. The white palace rose on its hill like the city of Antioch, where I had first loved Raymond, so many years ago.

  The castle of Winchester never failed to soothe my nerves, or to give me hope for the future. Always it reminded me of my youth, a time when everything seemed possible, and the love I had given up to keep the crown of France.

  Raymond was long dead, and my marriage to Louis of France long over. As we rode into the keep at Winchester, I turned my mind from the past. Memories were like sirens; I might dash myself upon their rocks and sink beneath the waves. Better by far to live in the present, and to take what comes.

  I set aside all thoughts of the past, and went to find Alais. I had given her rooms with a view of the rose garden. Fresh clean air came in from two tall windows, and the tapestries were well brushed, clean of dust. I wanted to make her welcome, to make her feel at home with me.

  We had come to Winchester only an hour before, but I would not wait to call Richard to me, to introduce him to his fiancée, My son’s early arrival was an omen, one that I would heed. I would make my move before my trunks were even unpacked. I had no religion but politics and the power it brought me. That day, I would worship in my own church, beneath my own god, and I would bring my son and my adopted daughter with me.

  I would take action that day, moving finally in the direction I had planned months before. This move was risky, but risk was a part of the game of power, as was passion, and the ability to lead. These were all traits I excelled in; all reasons why Henry still loved me, in spite of himself. Though Henry was in Anjou, I would make my move in Winchester, and by sunset the next day, Henry would know of it.

  I scratched at Alais’ door and came in without waiting for leave, followed by a retinue of ladies. Alais bowed, half-dressed in one of my own gowns, which I had sent to her so that she might wear it to meet my son. She had been looking out the window at the rose garden below, and the laces were still undone, dangling from her hand.

  My women saw at once that I had lent the princess my favorite gown. I saw them take this in, exchanging glances. I thought for a moment that Angeline, the least discreet of my ladies, might even comment, but her sister Mathilde laid a hand on her arm in warning, and she said nothing.

  I laughed to find Alais half-dressed, and reminded myself to send a woman to see to her needs. I moved across the room at once, and helped her lace her gown.

  “Look, ladies, the flower of France has learned to dress herself among the sisters.”

  I used my brittle, public voice, and Alais met my eyes. She smiled wryly, making sure that my women could not see her do it. I would have kissed her, but with half my court present, I simply tied up her gown.

  The ladies laughed at my gibe even as I finished lacing her. Alais could not care less what my women thought of her.

  “Well, Alais, I have good news. You will be fitted for new gowns, and the first just waits for the seamstress to take your measure. It will be ready tomorrow.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

  “I have even better news today.”

  My ladies leaned in closer, though I still spoke in my public voice, which could have filled a room much larger than this one.

  “This simple dress will have to do. Today Richard has come here to meet you.”

  My women laughed again to hear me call my own gown simple. Just as I had known it would, its deep emerald green went well with Alais’ rich brown hair. I stepped back and took stock of her. Richard would no doubt be on his knees.

  My ladies watched her, as if their eyes would drink her in. Alais stood as unruffled as a glassy lake, her calm rising from the depths of her soul. In the last day, I had realized that this calm did not come to her from Louis, or from me. I wondered who had given it to her. Perhaps it was her religion, or her mother, or something else altogether that I had yet to learn of. As well as I knew her, some facets of her heart were still a mystery to me.

  She curtsied to me, her curls falling in a curtain to hide her face. “As you say, Your Majesty. I serve you in this, as in all things.”

  I almost laughed out loud that she would take a servant’s tone with me. I would reprimand her later; I would remind her that whatever honor was due to me was due her as well. She was a princess of France.

  “Very good,” I said. “I will tell Richard that you are eager to meet him. We will all come together in the solar in an hour, if that suits you.”

  “As you wish, Your Majesty.”

  I saw only then that she was pale and frightened. I remembered that she had seen little of men in the nunnery I had sent her to. Only a few priests, and to call such milksops men was generous.

  Beneath her fear, I saw her determination. Her strength would always outweigh her fear, and always conquer it. It had been many years since fear had touched my heart, but I remembered. I once had to face and conquer my fear, too.

  If we had been alone, I would have said something to comfort her. But I had made the first meeting between the princess and my son a public matter, as it must be. I could show her no sy
mpathy before my ladies. Always, especially in front of the court, I was queen.

  My solar was full of women when Alais arrived, but none of them sewed or embroidered or gossiped, their usual pastimes in my keep. They watched the door, waiting for the princess. Richard stood beside me, fresh from the tiltyard, his chain mail visible beneath his tunic. I loved to see him dressed in armor, his red hair falling around his shoulders like a lion’s mane.

  My son was fifteen summers old, and towered over me, as Henry had the day I met him. His eyes were the same bright blue my father’s had been, and they shone with love for me, just as my father’s always had. His shoulders were broad, and the planes of his cheekbones high in his face, cheekbones that were so like mine. Alais would be pleased with his beauty, I had no doubt.

  His power rose off him in waves, waves held back by a wall of protocol and honor. As I watched him, he took in the room and all the women in it, looking for ways to defend it, or ways to conquer it. It was my solar, a room built for women taking their leisure in times of peace. But always, Richard’s mind was made for war.

  Richard was like a lion in a room full of forbidden sheep, uncomfortable surrounded by so many women. I could see in his stance, in his utter stillness, that he would rather be anywhere but here. He would rather be outside in the fresh air, a man among men. The women’s solar was a place he came only out of love for me.

  Alais stepped into my rooms with only the one woman I had given to attend her. She moved with grace, and curtsied to me as she always did, the smoothness of her motion belying any fear I had seen when we were in her rooms. Her eyes were downcast, hiding even her strength. Her hair fell in long curls to her waist against the deep green of my silk gown.

  I saw her in that moment as a man would see her, a fresh young thing just out of the nunnery, ripe for whatever pleasures a man might devise. Her breasts rose with her breath beneath the borrowed silk. The skirt of my gown had been drawn up in a leather belt worked in gold, so that the emerald ribbons of her shift showed at her ankles. She smelled sweet, like spring rain. Her cheeks were fresh and smooth, and only faintly tinged with a blush of pink.