The Queen's Pawn

by Christy English

  “Betrothal? Are there not women enough to slake your lust? And yet you come into my hall and make demands of your liege lord?”

  “I demand nothing, sire. I ask only that you do as you have sworn you must.”

  “Must? Must?” Henry rose to his feet.

  Men-at-arms stepped forward from the shadows, armed not with swords but with pikes. I started to rise, to stand between Richard and the king, but Eleanor gripped my hand so hard her fingernails dug into my flesh, and her rings bit into my wrist. I kept my seat.

  “This is not a word one uses to God’s anointed king. I must do nothing but my will. I am king in this hall. You will never be.”

  “Honor my betrothal, Father. Set the date for our wedding.”

  “It’s the wedding night you crave, boy. And again I say, slake your lust somewhere else. For the Princess Alais is in my keeping, and she will stay in my keeping until I deem otherwise.”

  “She is in your power. Give her to me.”

  “Get out.”

  Henry’s voice was not the shout I expected but a deadly calm that belied the fury on his face. “Get out of my sight, you miserable whelp. For now I tell you this: you will never have her. Not today Not tomorrow. Not next year. Not for as long as I draw breath.”

  I clutched Eleanor’s hand, and turned to her, that she might stand between them, and stop this. Her face was as pale as driven snow.

  Father and son faced each other with such hatred that if one had held a weapon, the other would be dead. No one in the hall moved, or even breathed, in that long moment of silence.

  Richard did not speak again, but turned on his heel and left the hall with his men following him. He left me there, clutching his mother’s hand.

  Henry looked neither right nor left, but strode from his own hall without a backward glance. He went out a side entrance, into the corridor that led to his private apartments.

  The courtiers did not gossip or laugh when this scene was done. They stared at one another in the deadly silence, until, one after the next, they rose from their benches or moved out from the shadows, where they had gone to get away from the prince, and from the wrath of the king. Every one of the courtiers turned and left the hall, and the servants with them, until Eleanor and I were left alone.

  “Stop him,” I said. “Don’t let Henry kill him.”

  She smoothed my curls back from my face. “He will never kill Richard,” Eleanor said. “Not as long as I draw breath. Now let me go.”

  I saw then that my fingers were clinging to hers, our earlier rancor far from my mind. I forced my fingers to relax and release her. My hands were stiff with fear. Eleanor chafed them, drawing blood back into them. She stood and kissed me.

  “Fear nothing, Alais. I will go to the king. Follow me in five minutes’ time. Do you know the way?”

  “I will find it,” I said, meeting her gaze without flinching.

  She left me then, and I sat alone. The hall was empty but for the rats that moved under the tables, looking for scraps now that all the court had fled.

  I found the king in his antechamber, in the room that led to the royal apartments where he slept. Eleanor stood facing him, and I could see no traces of his rage, as if it had never been. The king and queen stood together, a few feet apart, but close enough that they made me think of conspirators, come together to weave a plot. Henry stood still, a letter of vellum in his hand.

  I thanked God that the king was no longer angry as I knelt on the hard wooden floor.

  “You may leave us.”

  Henry’s voice was calm, and almost sweet. I blinked, thinking that he had ordered me from him already, when I saw a girl not much older than myself cross the room to him. She wore little, just a shift with a fur robe thrown around it, though spring had passed already into summer.

  Her hair was long and curly, like mine, and its blond length reached her waist. Her eyes were blue like the summer sky, and I was surprised how pretty she was.

  I did not think to question her presence, until I saw her kiss the king.

  I felt my throat close with jealousy I tried to force my eyes from the sight, but I could not look away. The king had not kissed me that way, down by the waterside. His lips had not devoured me as if he would drink me in.

  Henry caressed her hair, his hand coming to rest on the small of her back. He stroked her backside absently, as one might stroke a horse, his eyes never leaving Eleanor’s face.

  “I will come to you anon,” he said.

  The girl left him, closing the door to his bedroom behind her. The king turned to me at once, his paramour forgotten. There was nothing of the connection between us in his eyes, as if our time together by the riverside had never been.

  “You come into my presence unannounced and uncalled for. What do you want, Princess?”

  “I come to beg Your Majesty’s forgiveness.”

  Henry’s face smoothed to blankness.

  I meant to speak for Richard, to call on Henry’s kindness to me, but it seemed his son no longer interested him.

  “I have a missive here. Do you know what it says?”

  “No, my lord.”

  “That’s odd, Alais. Because you wrote it.”

  My heart stopped in my chest, and my knees gave way beneath me. Henry held the letter that had been meant for my father.

  He did not look away from me, and I came to myself, half kneeling on that stone floor. I would not let them stand over me in triumph. I rose slowly and faced him, trying to gather my scattered wits, the fury in my eyes held in check but barely. I had been betrayed. My father would never read that letter.

  Henry saw the calm courage in my eyes, and the fire of my fury behind it. He looked into my face, seeking me out. Had Eleanor not been there, I think he would have said something more. As it was, he walked to the brazier behind him, and cast my letter into the fire.

  “Never write to your father again, Alais. I am your king now.”

  Henry stared at me for a long moment, as if waiting for me to speak. I said nothing; Eleanor stood watching us. I saw in his eyes not only his anger at me, but, beyond that, a deeper wish to go to his whore.

  He walked away from me, his eyes on his bedroom door. The room was silent after he left. The only sound was the crackle of burning vellum, as the last of my letter bled out in smoke and ash.

  “Alais,” Eleanor said, “the next time you send a message, see to it that the courier is not in my employ”

  I heard her words as if they had been spoken to another. She had betrayed me twice: first, by knowing of Richard’s infidelity and saying nothing, and second, by handing my treasonous letter over to the king. Had our roles been reversed, I would have burned her letter as soon as it came into my hand. The knowledge of her betrayal was a distant pain. I had lost both Richard and Eleanor in the same day, almost in the same hour. I found I could feel nothing.

  “I loved you.”

  It was my only thought. As I stood there, watching her smile at me, I could only speak the truth.

  Eleanor’s smile faded. “You love me still, Alais. You always will. Just as I love you.”

  I thought that she would leave me, but she stopped by the door to the outer hallway “I betrayed you to Henry to save Richard. Your letter distracted him, and bought me time. Richard is gone from the keep, safe from Henry’s anger. It was necessary.”

  I did not speak, but stared at the door the king had gone through. Behind its smooth panels, I could hear the gasps of his whore as he drove her in love play. Eleanor and I stood together and listened as Henry’s whore called out his name.

  The sound of their motions stopped, and there was silence. Eleanor stared at me for a long moment before she turned and walked away

  PART III

  A WOMAN GROWN

  Chapter 18

  ALAIS: TO BED A KING

  Windsor Castle

  July 1172

  Marie Helene waited for me in my rooms, Bijou on her knee. My little dog tried to leap from
her lap and come to me, but when Marie Helene saw the look on my face, she held her back.

  Her sewing basket lay on the table; she had been embroidering the sleeves of my silver gown. I looked down at my arms and saw my own sleeves of gold, where the gold thread traced out my crest, and Richard’s. Eleanor giving my letter to the king was the final stroke that severed my self-control. The anger I had been suppressing all day rose in me in one great tide, and my reason was swept away. I grabbed Marie Helene’s scissors from her basket. She watched me, but did not move, for something in my face held her still.

  I could not bear the touch of that silk a moment longer. The cloth of gold reached around me, drawing my slender waist in its grip, choking me so that I could not move, could not breathe.

  I did not wait to unlace myself, but cut the laces of my gown with Marie Helene’s scissors with one smooth sweep of my arm. She gasped, frightened that I might hurt myself, but when I laid the scissors down, there was no blood on them. With those laces cut, I could breathe again, but only barely

  I tore the gown from my body, the beautiful, expensive gown it had taken three women a week to make. I cast it onto the stone floor of my room, and it lay there like my discarded hope. I thought to throw the scissors down on it, to trample it, as I wanted to trample on Eleanor and Richard for the way they had tricked me, for the way they would still use me, for I was in their power. I was still to marry her son.

  When the king’s anger cooled, in a month or a year, I would have to stand before God and swear to obey Richard for the rest of my life. I would have to take yet another oath, and keep it, no matter what came after, no matter how many women he thought to bring to his bed. My jealousy almost overwhelmed me.

  My love for him lay in shards around me like broken glass. I could not walk anywhere for fear of cutting myself, not forward, nor back. I thought of my father, and how he had endured such humiliation at Eleanor’s hands when they had been married. All the world knew that she cuckolded him without restraint. And so would Richard do to me.

  I had known of such things all my life. To expect fidelity from a man was to expect the sun not to shine. I found that though I had held this truth in my mind, my heart had not known it. It was my heart that bled now, and burned with fire.

  I snatched my golden gown from the floor and tore at it. I was weak, and the dress was well made, for I only made a small rent at the hem.

  I lifted Marie Helene’s scissors once more and heard her say, “No, my lady!” But she did not move to stop me.

  I used those scissors to start a tear, but I did not want to just cut the gown to ribbons with steel. I wanted to rip the dress apart with my own hands, and that’s what I did, each tear feeding the next, until the gown lay in pieces at my feet, on the table, and draped over a chair. When I finally came to myself, I was holding one sleeve, staring at Marie Helene’s beautiful embroidery in my hand.

  Tears obscured my vision. I remembered Eleanor’s admonition, to give my tears to no man, but to keep them for myself, for they were my own power, and no other’s. I remembered those words, and I drew my tears back into my heart.

  It was Eleanor’s betrayal I thought of finally, as I came back to myself. The sight of my letter in Henry’s hand stayed with me, the proof that Eleanor had used me for her own ends, without hesitation, without remorse. Perhaps she had always done so, and my love for her, and hers for me, had been an illusion. I knew that, in the future, she would use me again. I dried my eyes on the remnant of that golden sleeve before I cast it into the fire.

  The charcoal in the brazier flamed high when the silk and cloth of gold touched it. My dress burned well, but gave off noxious fumes. I stood in that black smoke, until each and every piece of that gown was burned to ash.

  I turned then to wash my face and hands in my silver bowl. Marie Helene set Bijou down and moved my brazier close to the window, so that the fumes would be carried away by the wind over the river. The wind blew in my favor, and carried that black smoke out of my chamber.

  I stripped off my dirty shift, and washed myself as best I could. Marie Helene called for more water, and the castle servants brought it, though the hour was late and they all should have been in bed.

  I stepped into that steaming tub, and Marie Helene bathed me without a word. She sang a sweet song, low under her breath. The sound of those words soothed me as nothing else could, as did the touch of her hands on my hair.

  She had the smoking brazier taken away, and a new, finer one brought, one that did not give off noxious odors. She led me gently to sit beside the fire; she dried my hair so that it curled to my waist once more in waves of brown and gold and maple, hair like my mother‘s, the woman I had never seen. I longed for my mother, my real mother, for the first time since I met Eleanor.

  Marie Helene stroked my hair, and it seemed to me that I felt my mother’s touch behind her hand. Then Bijou, who had been frightened by my fury, came out from beneath the table and lay down on my foot. I picked her up and kissed her, and held her for the rest of the night.

  I did not stay awake, as I had the night before. I said my prayers, asking for a blessing on my father, on my brother, and on the kingdom of France. Then I slept, with Marie Helene beside me.

  Before I slept, I remembered the king’s words to me, down by the waterside. I still had the wreath he had made me. He had crowned me with those flowers; he had told me that one day he would place another crown on my head.

  I knew well that the king had spoken in the heat of the moment, when lust no doubt had overwhelmed his reason, or perhaps when his mood had been softened by our time together on the grass of the riverbank. Henry no doubt had forgotten his words almost as soon as he spoke them. But I remembered.

  Tomorrow, I would see the king.

  In the morning, I stayed in my rooms and Eleanor did not send for me. I took a little bread and cheese at noon, and then called for Marie Helene to dress me.

  I was calm by this time, for I knew my purpose. I would step out on my own. I would leave Eleanor and Richard behind, and see what I might make of my life for myself. I had the clarity of thought that comes after great anger, when a woman knows she has nothing left to lose, and everything to play for.

  My love for Richard still lay in shards at my feet. I would love him all my life, but it was a love fraught with lies, a love I could not live with.

  I would not think of Eleanor. When she came into my mind, all I could see was her elegant, tapered fingers holding my father’s letter, handing it in one graceful motion to the king. I knew her reasons for betraying me: she had handed over my letter to save Richard, as she would have betrayed anyone else to protect the son she loved. Her love for me had not stayed her hand; she had never loved me, if she could use me as just one more pawn on her chessboard.

  As I dressed, I thought of Henry I set aside all ideas of sin and loss, and thought of his gray eyes, of his wide peasant hands, and of how his hands felt on my waist, lifting me down from my horse.

  I perfumed my body and my hair with the rose water Eleanor had given me, and donned my red silk gown. I paid close attention to my shift as well, and chose one embroidered by Marie Helene with red flowers at the hem and along the collar. I did not draw the string at the throat closed tight, but left the shift to drape over my shoulders. I knew that with one tug, it could easily be drawn off.

  I wore my red silk gown, for it was the first dress Henry had seen me wear in his hall the night he fed me from his own trencher, the night he offered me venison from his own knife. I laid a light veil across my hair that covered my curls but did not hide them. Over that veil I wore the filet Eleanor had given me, the fleurs-de-Iys of my father’s crest riding like a crown over my brow.

  I looked into my bronze mirror, and I did not recognize the woman reflected there. My face was the same except for my eyes.

  “My lady” Marie Helene said. “You must consider”

  “I have already considered.”

  “Your Highness, you must
think of the queen.”

  “I do think on her, Marie Helene. I go to the king. Every step I take toward his chamber, I will think of her, and of her son.”

  Marie Helene did not speak again. As I watched, two tears formed in the shadows of her eyes. They fell in silence, marring her cheeks.

  “Do not weep for them,” I said.

  “My lady, I weep for you.”

  I laid my mirror down, that I might not see my own bitterness. “Marie Helene, there is no need.”

  I left then and walked alone to the king’s chambers, though Marie Helene asked to go in my stead. She hoped to call on him, so that Henry might turn her, and thus myself, away. I knew better than to send another to do my bidding. I was nothing, and no one. I had not even Eleanor’s love and protection; to her, I was just one more thing to be used and discarded. Whatever I was, and whatever I would be, I would have to make of myself.

  The king was not alone, as kings never are. I stood outside the door to his antechamber, dressed in my red silk gown. The men-at-arms who kept the gate stared at me as if I were an apparition. I simply smiled at them, and asked to see the king.

  They did not know what to do, so they sent a page inside with my request. I had chosen my time well, and carefully, for the daily business of the kingdom was winding down. In an hour, the king would go to the main hall, to greet his people and break his afternoon fast. There would be dancing and singing in the hall, as there was every night. Women would smile at him, offering him their charms, were he to choose to taste them.

  If I had my way, Henry would not be there that night.

  I did not wait long. Henry’s chamberlain called me in almost at once, bowing to me, for he knew who my father was.

  I saw Henry standing beside his worktable, which was piled high with scrolls of vellum. Lamps burned and smoked, for in the depths of Windsor Castle it was already night.