“I will leave you to talk,” she said demurely, then hurried to her bedchamber.
She wondered why Richard was here, what had brought him all this way. His brother’s funeral was done; he had no reason to come back to England, unless of course the King had plans to crown him as the young King whilst he still lived, as he had done with young Henry.
She was dozing when she felt the bed move. Her eyes squinted against the light of the moon, then the warmth of the King’s flesh settled against her. The sensation of her shift sliding upwards jolted her fully awake and she stared up at him as he pulled the garment over her head.
“Was it very awful?” She asked.
“It was. I have fought with my sons before, many times, but to lose one like this was too much.”
“Marguerite said he died of the gut rot.”
“So he did, but he would not have contracted it were it not for the war. Why do my boys have to fight with me, with each other?”
“They are their father’s sons,” she said. “Richard will make a fine King.”
Henry moved away, lay on his back.
“I haven’t decided yet whether to make him my heir. Well, not to England at least.”
“What? Who else?”
“England is insignificant, a tiny little island, primitive in a lot of ways. I thought I might give it to John.”
Alys could not help but laugh; she laughed so hard she had to turn on her side so as to double up with it.
“What is so funny?” Henry demanded.
“Do you not know these sons of yours at all?” She asked him. “Richard is your heir. England might well be but a tiny island, but its ruler is a King. He is not a Duke or a Count; he is a King.”
“Tis only a word.”
“Is that what you think? If you leave England to John, Richard will take it from him in a heartbeat. If you don’t know that, you are living in a fool’s heaven.”
“You could be right,” he said.
He pulled her close to him. He had not had the comfort of a woman for months and he had not crept into her bed to talk politics.
ALYS WOKE TO THE SOUND of men shouting, of steel clashing on steel followed by many hooves galloping away. She dressed and went downstairs. There was no sign of Richard.
Henry sat at the table, drinking ale, his eyes piercing fury at the pewter tankard.
“Richard has gone?” She asked.
Recalling their conversation of the night before, she wondered if the King had been foolish enough to make his proposal to his son.
“He is to have England,” Henry said. “He is to have England, Normandy, and all my other territories in France. Was it really too much to expect him to spare something for his brother?”
“John?” Alys slipped into the bench beside him and reached for some bread.
“It was fair, was it not? I asked him to hand Aquitaine over to John. Why was that too much when he would have everything else?”
Once more, Alys wanted to laugh, but she sensed he would not take it as well as he did last night, when she lay naked beside him.
“Aquitaine is his mother’s pride and joy. You cannot expect Richard to part with it, especially not to that little weasel.”
She clamped her hand over her mouth, but it was too late. The words already floated in the air. Henry moved a little away from her, bit his lip and shoved his hands under his thighs to keep from lashing out.
“You talk of my son like that?” He demanded. “What has he ever done to you? He is the only one who is loyal.”
It had to be said, whether Henry liked it or not. She could see through Prince John’s sycophancy, even if his father could not.
“John is not loyal, Sire,” she said. “He knows how to flatter and simper to get his own way.”
“You are wrong.”
“No, I am not wrong. He leers at me like a dog at a bitch on heat, he makes suggestive remarks. He even touches me when he thinks no one is there to see.”
“He is affectionate.”
“He is a cretin and a lecher. He would murder all of you if he thought he could get away with it. Even little Arthur.”
“His own nephew? Alys, you are dreaming.”
“I heard him, when we got word of young Henry’s death. I heard him saying that if Richard did not get himself a legitimate heir, he wouldn’t let the throne go to Arthur.”
“Enough of this talk,” Henry said, his voice rising. “I’ll not have you slander my son.”
“It is only slander if it is a lie,” she muttered.
An uncomfortable silence drifted in the air for a few moments, then Henry spoke again, as though he had a new thought.
“Richard might hand it over to Eleanor, though,” he muttered. “Then, once she has it, I can lock her up again and give it to John.”
Alys stared at him in horror, not certain whether he had spoken to her or to himself. This really was the silliest scheme of all and her objection would still stand. Richard would soon take it away from him. She was the last person to have any compassion for Queen Eleanor, but the idea of releasing her from confinement in prison, after so many years, on the promise of a return to the land of her birth, only to snatch it away and send her back to gaol, was a wicked, cruel thing to do.
“If you do that, Henry,” she said, “I will never forgive you.”
“It will not be your place to forgive me,” he snapped angrily.
“Perhaps not, but you will never be welcome in my bed again.”
“What is this?” Henry asked, his frown dark and threatening. “Since when did you have any fondness for Eleanor?”
“Fondness? No. I have no fondness or even liking for her, but you loved her once and she loved you. She is the mother of your children and that has to count for something. What you propose could only be done by a man without a drop of kindness in him.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The End of an Era
AFTER HER WORDS ON behalf of Queen Eleanor, Henry changed towards Alys and if truth be told, she was not sorry.
At the end of the previous year, her brother once more demanded that Henry proceed with Alys’ marriage to Richard, despite knowing what he had been to her. Philip’s great friendship with Richard was shattered by his refusal to marry Alys and she learned from Henry that Philip had decided not to believe the shocking tale of her adultery with the King.
That was his way of dealing with the situation and forcing the marriage, but Alys was sure Richard would never comply, not now. His refusal could well cause a war, but she most certainly did not want a husband who had been forced into marriage and who thought of her with contempt.
The passion had gone out of her affair with the King. They no longer shared a bed and Alys was quite sure that Henry had found a new woman and a new bed in which to find comfort.
Alys’s life was in tatters and the blame for that lay with the aging King of England, who was once more preparing to go to war with his heir.
“I must go, little Alys,” Henry told her. He reached out a hand to cup her chin, his lips gently touched hers and he stepped away. “Your brother demands a marriage. Richard will have none of it but I have offered him John instead.”
Alys gasped audibly. She thought for a moment she was dreaming, that this was some sordid nightmare from which she would soon awake, and she wanted to pinch herself to be sure it was real.
“John?” She said through the anger which threatened to choke her. “I cannot marry John. I despise him. He is a hateful, cruel boy without an iota of compassion in his entire body. I would not trust him with the stable cats, yet you would cast me off and throw me at him. God, how I hate you.”
“Don’t make so much fuss, Alys. He is of good birth, he is presentable, he will do his duty by you. You are obviously barren, but we need not tell him that.”
“No! No, I will not marry John. I will leap from the battlements before I comply with this.”
He shook his head slowly.
“Don’t e
xaggerate,” he said. “You must have known our affair could not last forever.”
“You once said you would make me your Queen.”
“And you can blame the Pope for that. He refused to annul my marriage and all it did was to stir up his memory and set him off demanding I marry you to Richard. Besides, it is over. We have had some good years together, we have loved. Now it is time for you to look to your future.”
“What future?” She demanded, her voice rising almost to a shriek. “You stole my future. I should have been the honoured and respected wife of your son and when he becomes King, I should have been Queen of England by his side. I would have made him a good wife, too. I tried to love him; I even did love him a little, until you told me he no longer wanted me.”
Henry turned away, found his way to the door then turned to study her.
“Goodbye, Alys,” he said.
“I will take the veil, enter a convent. That is where worn out queens go, is it not?”
“You are not a queen. You never were.”
“I would have been, but for your interference.”
He kept walking, showing her his back. He spoke over his shoulder, could not take the time to face her one last time.
“That was not what was promised, so you should not miss it now.”
“You’ll not find me here when you return,” she said. “Your guards might stop me leaving the castle, but they cannot stop me jumping from the battlements.”
Henry shook his head again and left the hall, leaving the echo of his heavy boots in his wake.
“Henry!” She screamed after him, but he was gone and her future with him. She was never to see him again.
ALYS CLIMBED TOWARD the castle roof, to where soldiers had, in the past, shot their arrows at invaders from their hiding places behind those walls. She had no one who would miss her; all she needed to do was to put her affairs in order, pass her dowry lands on to someone else as Marguerite had for her. But who? They could go to her brother and he would likely steal them anyway, but what difference did it make? She would not be here to care. If there was such a place as purgatory, that is where she would be. The idea did not frighten her nearly so much as staying here and being passed around Christendom like some tarnished trophy that nobody really wanted.
Only once had she been up to the very top of the stone steps. That was when she had first arrived here as a nine year old child. Richard’s sister, Eleanor, had brought her here, to show her how far she could see from this height, all the way to the sea.
Thinking about young Eleanor now, she wondered if she was happy. She had been a good friend to Alys, during the brief time she remained here. She was her only friend when she arrived in this damp land, but she never wrote any more. She had not written to Alys since King Henry’s request for an annulment from Queen Eleanor had been rejected by the Pope. That was when word escaped into court circles that he wanted to be free to marry Alys. She could only imagine that the whole Plantagenet family blamed her.
Her steps never faltered on her way to the top, the torch clutched firmly in her hand. She wanted to get there before she rested, before she had time to change her mind. But now she reached that dark place, where the stone curled round the stairs, where a wooden door stood in her way, its iron handle barely visible in the feeble light from the torch. She found a sconce in the wall and slipped her torch into it, then took the handle in both hands and turned it.
It firmly resisted her efforts to open it. Turning it again, she pushed the door with the full weight of her slender body, but nothing changed. She let out a sob so loud it echoed about the darkness and bounced back to haunt her. The door was locked.
So, Henry had been listening to her threat of suicide. She thought he had simply dismissed it as female hysterics, but he had arranged to have these doors locked to stop her from carrying out her threat. Or could it be she was crediting herself with too much importance? It was more likely that these doors were always locked.
Should some invaders breach the battlements with ladders and find these doors unlocked, they could enter the castle and ravage the women, murder the men and children and steal everything of value.
Her mind was wandering again. That had never happened, but it could and it might well find something of interest, something better than the continual boredom and uncertainty.
She took her torch from the sconce and turned to make her way back down the stairs. There would be no escape this way.
It was but a month later that she had a visit from Prince John. When first he appeared in the solar where she was repairing a gown, she hardly recognised him. She had only seen him a few times and the last time, he was little more than an overgrown boy. Now he had matured somewhat, his hair that same red gold as his brothers and his father, but unkempt, scraggy and he wore a scraggy beard to match.
Recalling the King’s last suggestion that she could marry his youngest son, she shuddered. No one would believe this creature was a royal prince; he looked as though he had not bathed in a year and he had most certainly taken no extra care of his person before he presented himself to Alys. But she expected nothing more of him.
He stood staring at her for some moments, an unpleasant and mocking smirk twisting his mouth beneath his moustache and Alys was certain that if she stood up, she would be taller than him. This prince had none of his brothers’ height or stature; perhaps that was his reason for resenting them, for being so unpleasant.
“Your Highness,” she said in greeting.
She didn’t discard her sewing nor did she get up from her chair. She didn’t feel that he deserved any such respect; indeed, she had got to a point where she felt she owed no one any respect. She would not rise for any one of them, not even the King when he finally decided to return. If he decided to return. His last words seemed to indicate that he had tired of her, that he had used her up and now had no use for her.
“My Lady,” Prince John replied. “I have heard a rumour that my father and your brother want you and I to wed.”
Her eyes met his and she hoped the contempt in her heart showed clearly in hers.
“Is that what you have heard, Your Highness?”
“It is. What think you of such a scheme?”
“It matters not at all what I think,” she replied. “I doubt it matters much what you think either. The whole of Christendom knows I was your father’s mistress. The Pope would not allow a marriage between us for that reason.”
He laughed, then strode toward the table and sat down beside her.
“It is as well. I baulked at being offered Richard’s leftovers; now you tell me it is even worse. I’ll not take my father’s leftovers to wife either.”
She could see in his countenance that he meant his rejection to give offence, that he meant to hurt her with his words. She would not allow him to suffer such an illusion.
“Good,” she said. “Then we are agreed.”
The fury which crossed his face was clear to anyone with eyes to see. He expected her to want him, expected her to be grateful no doubt; what a fool. But she saw his fists bunching, his knuckles white as he glared at her and she got quickly to her feet, clutching her needle in her fingers. It was an inadequate weapon, but the only one she had.
He stood, took a step toward her and raised his hand to strike her. But before his calloused palm connected with her cheek, she had stabbed her needle into the gap between his jerkin and his belt, the only piece of flesh covered by nothing but thin linen.
He screamed and leapt back, taking the needle with him.
“What have you done?” He yelled. “You have stabbed me.”
“Don’t be such a baby,” she said. “Tis but a needle. I would like it back when it has been cleaned.”
Then she hurried from the solarium and fled up the staircase to her bedchamber, bolting the door behind her.
She had her meals sent up until she was certain the Prince had gone, but his words pounded in her brain like a hammer. She already knew the King
thought it a good thing for her to marry John, but Philip? Surely Philip would not want that, would he? She hardly knew him; in fact, she knew him not at all, only by the letters she had received from him since he became King of France. They were all letters giving her instructions on what she should do and what she should say, and how she should behave.
He had condemned her for bedding King Henry. It had never occurred to him, as it had to Richard, to consider she might have been forced, or coerced or even persuaded.
Weeks later, as summer flowers coloured the hedgerows that Alys could only see from the topmost chamber in the castle, a visitor arrived who was to both fill her with dread and change her monotony for a new, brief hope.
Eleanor of Aquitaine, the Witch Queen, the hated consort of Alys’ lover, arrived by coach surrounded by an escort of soldiers. Alys saw her arrive. She was free? Henry had softened toward his estranged Queen after sixteen years and freed her. Alys wondered why, wondered what scheme he had dreamed up that required Eleanor’s release.
No doubt, her freedom would be brief, as it was before when he wanted only for her to reclaim Aquitaine, so that he could steal it from Richard.
But she was here, in Winchester, and Alys watched her alight from her coach, her hand in that of one of the soldiers. Those men were not behaving like guards to keep her imprisoned, more like guards in her service.
Alys waited for her heart to leap in fear, but it seemed she had no fear left in her. There was nothing Eleanor could do to her that she would not welcome and she expected no mercy from the Witch Queen. Alys’ own brother had no pity for her plight; she could scarcely expect more from her lover’s wife. And this wife was not of the obedient and compliant kind; this wife was a monster who would have her revenge at any cost.
Alys gathered her courage about her and stood to greet the Queen. She would not allow Eleanor to frighten her and if she decided to do away with her, it was no different from her earlier plan to do away with herself. Such a fate would be infinitely preferable to being forced into a marriage with Prince John.
The Loves of the Lionheart Page 9