The Queen's Pawn

by Christy English

  I added the smallest touch of blue to the Christ Child’s eye where He looked out from my painting, smiling as Rose had smiled at me.

  I laid my brush down and looked at the face of my daughter where I had painted her on the vellum. It was intended for a squire’s wife down the road in Bath, and her retinue was coming for it on the morrow.

  As I sat among the flowers of the simples garden, Richard came to me. He had met with my father the year before at Rouen. He had stood as witness to the lie Henry swore was truth: that Henry had never touched me. My father and King Henry had confirmed my betrothal to Richard once more. I wondered now, and not for the first time, what Richard thought of this, of the whole world pushing me into his arms, when all but my father knew I had been the king’s mistress.

  Richard was as tall and straight as I had ever seen him, and it seemed that his shoulders were even wider than I remembered. His red hair was touched with gold in the sunlight. I had forgotten how beautiful he was. He seemed older than his twenty-one years. I knew that he still bore the burden of his father’s enmity, and the loss of his mother.

  Just weeks after I had last seen her, Eleanor had led her sons in a rebellion against their father, a war that even I, as close as we had been, could not have foreseen. Even Henry had been caught unaware, but he had known, as I did, that his sons would never have united against him without Eleanor urging them to it.

  The rebellion had ended with each of Henry’s sons falling one by one, as pawns on a chessboard, to Henry’s superior strength. Henry had forgiven each of them, going so far as to offer them additional incomes and castles on the lands they held by title only. But Henry, being Henry, gave up none of his political power.

  Just as he had been unable and unwilling to have a partnership with me or with Eleanor before me, Henry would brook no half measures with his sons. Though all three held title to their duchies, both by right of birth and by oath to their overlord, the King of France, Henry conceded nothing. Then, as always, Henry held his power close. I wondered if he found his power cold comfort, as my prayers were cold comfort for me.

  Despite his largesse to his sons, Henry had not forgiven Eleanor. As the architect of the rebellion, as the mind who had united her sons against their father, Eleanor had been locked away.

  I did not stand to greet Richard as I once would have done. I shaded my eyes from the sun with one gloved hand and smiled.

  “Well met, my lord prince. You are welcome to this place.”

  There was a stone bench near my high table, and he sat down on it.

  “That is beautiful,” Richard said.

  “Thank you. Painting soothes me as nothing else can.”

  His hair was longer, and reached his shoulders. This lion’s mane suited him, and brought out the electric blue of his eyes.

  “I have come to say that I am sorry.”

  I came down from my stool and sat beside him. Though it was no longer my right, I reached out and took his hand in mine.

  Richard’s hand was large, with long fingers and blunt-cut nails. The calluses rose on his palm where his sword bit into it, and made it stronger.

  “I am sorry for your loss, though I know it is years past,” he said. “I am sorry I could not come to you sooner.”

  “You are here now,” I said. We sat for a long time, his hand in mine.

  “Eleanor is still locked away at Sarum?” I asked, hoping perhaps she had been set free, and I simply had not heard of it. I knew that Henry would never let me go, but I prayed always that for Eleanor’s sake he would relent. Confinement would prey on her much more than it did on me.

  “She is at Winchester now. It is better for her there, but still, she is not free.” His face was closed to me, as it sometimes was when he spoke of her.

  “I am sorry to hear it. I pray for her always.”

  “And will you pray for me, Alais?”

  For a moment, it was as if we were back in the kitchen garden at Windsor Castle. I could see his sword, driven into the ground at my feet, his blue eyes staring up at me, full of a love that neither of us would ever lay down completely.

  “I always pray for you, Richard. You will have my prayers with you until the day I die.”

  He looked away from me, and I knew that he swallowed his tears. But then he smiled, and it was as if a second sun came out to warm the garden.

  He spoke then of the reason he had come to me. “Mother sends her love.” Richard swallowed hard, as if suddenly shy, and met my eyes. “She reminded me of the conversation we had at Windsor, just before I was forced to leave. You saved me that day. I have never forgotten it.”

  “Richard, I did what I had to do.”

  “No,” he said. “You did much more.”

  Richard stood, and drew me to my feet. “I tell you now that I have forgotten no vow that lies between us.”

  I saw his love for me in his eyes, undimmed by the evil I had done.

  “I will love you, no matter how long you sit alone in this house of God. When my father is dead, I will come and fetch you out.”

  I heard his words imply all he could not say. He would one day marry me, even though I had spurned him, even though I had borne his father a child. Our love still lived, untouched by politics and loss. I saw that it always would, no matter what might come to tarnish it. Our love would gleam bright again, once we lifted our hands to polish it.

  Never had I hoped for such a reprieve. When I was released from the prison of my nunnery, Richard would come for me. He would honor our betrothal, not for politics or for the power my father’s lands might bring him, but for me.

  I pressed my lips to his cheek, taking in the sun-warmed scent of his skin. His arms came around me, and drew me to him.

  For a long moment we did not speak, cherishing the revived possibilities between us. I knew that he would not be faithful, as no man was. But I knew he loved me. I knew that I loved him. We could start again, and make a true marriage, with nothing else to come between us.

  Richard spoke finally, and his voice was hoarse with his longing for me. His grip loosened, and I stepped back, so that I might once more see his face.

  “Mother is allowed no letters, but she instructed me to give you this message. She will bless our union. Nothing will give her more joy”

  He reached into the pouch at his belt, and drew out a red rose with a shortened stem, a rose that bore no thorns. “The queen asks that I give you this, that you may not forget her, and her pledge.”

  I took the flower he offered me, its petals like velvet on my fingertips. It was a Persian rose, one of the strain Eleanor had brought back from the Levant years ago, when she was still married to my father.

  Richard drew me close and I felt his lips on my hair.

  “The king will not let me come again, I think, not for a very long time. Remember what I have said to you.”

  “I will remember.”

  I could feel his reluctance to leave me, but his arms fell away. He strode away from me, as if afraid what he might do were he to linger. Richard turned back once at the gate, raised his hand, and smiled at me.

  I saw his red hair shining in the sun. When the day came for us to be married, I wondered if our children would wear his hair or mine.

  I saw Eleanor in his smile for the first time in that sun-warmed garden. I had never noticed before how his slanted eyes were so like hers. We would all be together again. Eleanor had said so; she had foreseen it. Now so could I.

  Richard left me then, but his presence lingered, and that of Eleanor. I felt them with me as I stood alone in that garden, holding the rose Eleanor had sent me.

  I would have to give up the painting of my daughter’s face on the morrow. But I did not need a painting to remind me of Rose, and of all she meant to me. Tomorrow, I would start a new painting, and this one, I would keep.

  Mother Sebastian came to me then, bringing lay sisters with her to clean up my painting things, and to take me into the chapel for prayers. I was glad to go. I w
as certain now that, one day, I would be free. I would enter the world once more, a woman of strength and power, as Eleanor had raised me to be.

  Afterword

  The rebellion referenced at the end of The Queen’s Pawn between Eleanor’s sons and Henry began in May 1173, and raged on until 1174. Henry fought each son on a different front: Henry the Younger in Normandy, Geoffrey in Brittany, and Richard in Aquitaine. One by one, each son fell to his father’s superior military strength, but Henry was not cruel in victory He forgave them all; he gave castles and additional income to each son in turn. But their war was fought in vain: Henry kept tight political control over all three of their duchies.

  The king was not as forgiving of Eleanor, since she was the driving force behind the rebellion in the first place. Henry no doubt knew that if left with her freedom, Eleanor would not accept defeat, but would rise in rebellion again, and bring their sons along with her. To separate her from their sons, especially her favorite son, Richard, Henry locked Eleanor away for the rest of his reign.

  In my novel, I have offered the possibility that Alais and Henry’s liaison was not all Henry’s idea, but an attempt by Alais to take the throne. I enjoy the idea that Eleanor of Aquitaine was not the only woman in Henry’s life that faced him as an equal. While the events of my novel occur from 1172 to 1173, the chroniclers of the time suggest that Henry took Alais as his mistress in 1175, and their liaison continued at least until 1177 In 1175, Henry also began to press the pope for an annulment of his marriage to Eleanor, which was never granted.

  Though in history, Alais was sent to Henry’s court at the age of nine, in The Queen’s Pawn I have made an adjustment to her age. Though most of the book is set in 1172-1173, I have made Alais fourteen and fifteen during those years to approximate her historical age when she and Henry engaged in their affair. Setting the novel during the years 1172-1173 served my book in one important way: it allowed the reader to watch Eleanor of Aquitaine’s machinations as she set the rebellion of 1173 in motion, while adding spice to Alais’ bid for the throne. The Queen’s Pawn simply asks the question, what if Henry and Alais’ affair had happened before the rebellion, and not after? How would the landscape of history and politics have changed? In my novel, though Alais’ play for power comes before Eleanor was locked away, the political landscape did not change because of her affair with Henry. No matter what the year, or how many letters Henry wrote to the pope calling for an annulment, Eleanor was queen, and remained so until Henry’s death in 1189.

  Beyond the Plantagenets themselves, Alais, Louis, and Eleanor’s lady-in-waiting Amaria, all the other people in this novel are fictitious.

  For simplicity’s sake, I have narrowed the action in my novel to only two of Henry’s holdings: Winchester Castle and Windsor Castle in England. Throughout Henry’s reign, the court was almost constantly on the move, and a great deal of time was spent in Henry’s larger holdings on the Continent, in Normandy and Anjou.

  I chose Windsor Castle for much of the action of this novel because it was the seat of Henry’s power in England. I chose Winchester Castle as the second setting for the novel because Eleanor was sent there once Henry imprisoned her. She spent the last years of Henry’s reign at Winchester Castle under guard, and additional years at Sarum on Salisbury Plain.

  Also for simplicity’s sake, I created the Abbey of St. Agnes near Bath as both a haven and a prison for Alais, Princess of France. The historical Alais knew many other prisons and havens throughout her years in Henry’s court; her historical whereabouts are known when others remember to make mention of her. In my fiction, I have given her a haven among the sisters of St. Agnes, a refuge that, as far as we know, she did not find in her life as a princess living among her father’s enemies.

  The unrest among the Plantagenets did not end with the events of my novel. Henry never allowed Eleanor freedom from her various prisons. She stayed under guard until Henry died in 1189. Young Henry died in 1187, and in 1189 Eleanor’s favorite son, Richard, became king. Though Richard was his father’s heir, he was at war with the king the winter Henry died. The first act of Richard’s reign was to set his mother free.

  Eleanor went on to advise her son throughout his kingship, with varying degrees of success. Though Richard clearly loved her, he rarely took her political advice, marrying a woman not of her choosing, going on Crusade in the Holy Land, and getting captured by fellow Christians on his way home so that Eleanor had to pay his ransom.

  Alais’ historical fate is less certain. It is logical to assume that after Henry died, Alais would be released to return to France. Though Richard did not marry her as his betrothal agreement called for, neither did he send her home. Instead, for years Alais remained in Rouen, in the heart of Richard’s territories. Only after Richard married Berengaria of Navarre and returned from his Crusade was Alais released to return to Paris. At that time, her brother, King Philippe Auguste, arranged her marriage to his vassal the Count of Ponthieu. Sources say that Alais and her husband had at least one child, but the date and cause of her death were not recorded.

  Richard fought his last battle at the castle of Châlus, conquering the French stronghold only to die from a festering arrow wound in his shoulder. Eleanor buried him at Fontevrault, near his father, next to the spot where she would one day lie. Eleanor sent Richard’s spleen to be buried at the site of his last battle, perhaps as a gesture to symbolize that his temper killed him in the end. Richard’s heart was buried in Rouen, the city where Alais spent years at the beginning of his reign.

  Christy English has a bachelor’s degree in history from Duke University. She lives in New York City. The Queen’s Pawn is her first novel. Please visit her at www.ChristyEnglish.com.

  READERS GUIDE

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  1. During the medieval period, young girls were often shipped abroad to make marriages of state. When Princess Alais’ marriage is arranged during her childhood, how does she face leaving her family behind? How is her reaction different from what a modern child’s would be?

  2. When Eleanor greets Alais on her arrival in England, Eleanor is surprised by what she discovers in the young girl. How is Alais different from what Eleanor expected? How is Eleanor different from what Alais expected to find in her father’s former wife?

  3. In The Queen’s Pawn, Eleanor of Aquitaine has a very cynical view of religion and the Church. How does this view influence her dealings with Alais? How does Alais feel about the role of religion in her own life? Which character do you think represents the common perception of the Church during the medieval period? Why?

  4. When Eleanor introduces Richard to Alais, she expects Richard to be “brought to his knees.” When Alais also is transformed by her meeting with her betrothed, is Eleanor surprised? What events unfold because of the mutual and immediate bond between Richard and Princess Alais?

  5. Even at fifteen, Richard the Lionhearted is known for his prowess in war, and for his patronage of poetry and music. When Richard stands up to sing for Alais at the feast in the great hall, how does Alais react? How does Eleanor? Does this scene foreshadow any of the conflict to come?

  6. Eleanor of Aquitaine claims to love both Richard and Princess Alais, but she also uses them to further her political ends. Throughout the course of the novel, did you believe that Eleanor loved them both? If so, whom did she love more?

  7. Eleanor has a spy network that reaches across her husband’s lands, both in England and on the Continent. How does Eleanor maintain this spy network? What methods does she use to keep information flowing into her hands?

  8. When Henry and Eleanor are first reunited, they share a moment alone in the great hall. In this scene, did you feel that Eleanor and Henry are speaking the truth, or are they both lying to each other? What are some of the things that Eleanor is trying to hide? Do you think she succeeds?

  9. When Princess Alais meets the king in the stable, she does not know him. What factors do you think contributed to the fact that she
did not recognize him? When she sees Henry again in the great hall that night, she is shocked. What might Henry seek to gain by deceiving Princess Alais, by not revealing who he is in the stable with the dogs?

  10. Princess Alais and King Henry are drawn to each other, long before Alais seduces him. Do you think they are bound by anything beyond lust? What other factors, if any, might draw Henry and Alais together?

  11. Richard swears an oath to Alais in the kitchen garden, only to be caught a few hours later making love to another woman. Do you think Richard’s infidelity makes his vow to Alais null and void? If not, why not? How is Alais’ reaction to his infidelity different from a modern woman’s? How does Alais’ reaction to Richard’s betrayal differ from Eleanor’s reaction when King Henry takes mistresses? Why?

  12. When Richard confronts Henry in the great hall, both Eleanor and Alais fear for his safety. Once Eleanor is alone with the king, she betrays Alais by handing over the letter the princess wrote to her father. Would Eleanor have used Alais’ letter to her father under any other circumstances? Why or why not? Which gives Alais a deeper feeling of betrayal, Richard’s infidelity or Eleanor putting Alais’ letter into Henry’s hands?

  13. Alais goes the next day to seduce the king. What are her motives for trying to take Eleanor’s husband from her? Over the course of the next few chapters, do you agree that Alais wants to become queen to protect the treaty with France, and the people of France from war? Why or why not?

  14. When Alais seduces Henry, and asks him to make her queen in Eleanor’s place, Henry agrees almost at once. Do you believe that this idea was in the back of Henry’s mind all along? If so, what made him decide to take Alais up on her offer of an alliance? Do you believe that Henry intended to keep his word to Alais?