The Queen's Pawn (27 page)

Alais held my eyes when she answered me. “I deny nothing.”

I sighed, and sat down, raising my goblet of wine to my lips. It was my silver goblet, the one that had gone missing the night before. I found later that it had been brought to Alais in the king’s rooms, at her request, so that I had to drink my wine from another. I kept my silver ewer and goblet in my own chamber now. No one would be fool enough to take them from there, not even Henry’s chamberlain. Henry’s people were allowed nowhere near my rooms, though no doubt he had spies among my women, as I had among his men.

“Alais, you have put me in an untenable position. You have slept with my husband, and all the court knows it. You must deny that it happened. If we stand together, we can save your reputation and our treaty with France. If you stand with me, I can protect you, even from yourself.”

“I have the king’s protection. I have no need of any other.”

I felt my temper rise, and I clamped my jaw down on it. If we both gave up our reason, neither of us would get anywhere. I did not look to Richard. He stayed silent behind me, as he had promised me he would. I knew he did not trust himself to speak with her, that, even now, his heart bled as if she had stabbed him with his own knife.

My eyes moved to the hourglass and saw that there was little time left before the evening meal. I would have to secure her assent, and quickly. There was no more time for niceties.

I saw the stubborn set of her lips, and remembered where I had seen that stubbornness before. Louis had always looked like that when he was determined to get his way Louis had given me that same look when I asked to be left with Raymond in peace. No doubt he would have worn that look the whole time he laid siege to Antioch, if I had not walked out of that city, and agreed to come home with him. The stubborn look sat strange on my daughter’s face, but she had been Louis’ daughter before she was mine.

“You are making a fool of me in my own court, Alais. I will not allow it.”

She stared at me without answering. I saw that she had not forgiven me for handing over her letter to the king. Behind her fury, I also saw her pain. She felt Richard had betrayed her, simply because he was a man. She felt I had betrayed her. She was furious with me for acting against her, for handing over her letter to Henry. But she was my daughter. I could bring her back to me.

Richard stepped forward then, and came to stand at my side. Finally, Alais looked at him, at the man she had claimed so fervently to love before she cuckolded him with my husband.

When she saw his face, the pain in his eyes pierced her fury. Alais took a step toward him, as if drawn by a higher force, as if she could not stop herself. She moved only one step, for Richard flinched away from her as if she were a leper and might infect all who came too near.

“How could you?” he asked her, his own fury rising to fill the blue of his eyes. “How could you be so faithless, and with him?”

Alais drew herself up as if he had struck her. I saw the tears in her eyes, tears that I knew she would not shed.

“You keep a mistress, and sit in judgment on me?”

Richard blinked, stunned. No woman in his life had ever thrown his infidelity back in his face. No other woman would have dared. But Alais stood before him, her dark eyes blazing with an inner fire.

I saw in that moment that she refused to accept what I had understood all my life: men are unfaithful ever. She thought to hold the men she loved to a higher standard. I could have warned her to look elsewhere if she expected faithfulness from Henry

“I thought better of you,” Richard said.

Alais swallowed her tears, for they had risen once more, and vied with her fury for supremacy. Her fury won, if only barely. Her eyes grew calm, her voice cold, as if we were dead to her already.

“I will deny nothing, for I am ashamed of nothing, except that I called you beloved and meant it”

I did not know if she was speaking to Richard or to me. Perhaps she was speaking to both of us. I know I felt the pain of her words, and I saw my own pain mirrored on Richard’s face.

She left us gasping. She walked away as if she had never known us, as if she might never see us again. I thought I might weep, for my heart was bleeding. Richard came to me then, and took my arm.

My strength flowed back at his touch. Alais loved me still, I knew that she did. I need only continue to chase her; I would run her to ground. What lay between us could not be undone.

 

Richard escorted me into Henry’s hall, his eyes shadowed and his face grim. I smiled brightly for all to see, and greeted by name each person who called to me, with a graceful sweep of my arm.

Alais was there before us, seated at Henry’s right hand. She shared his trencher, lifting a morsel of squab to her lips as her eyes turned to look at me. They had started the feast without us.

Henry saw the breach and regretted it. I was still his wife and queen. He smiled at me and bowed, first to me and then to Richard. My smile did not leave my face, though the knife twisted in my heart. The sight of my daughter seated next to my husband, as if her place were there and not with me, was almost my undoing. But I would not think of that. Instead, I pressed my hand down hard on Richard’s arm until he bowed to his father, and drew out my chair for me.

“Welcome, wife,” Henry called, sitting down once more and raising his glass to me. I thought at first he meant to rub my face in his triumph, but I saw soon that he meant only to make the peace. I was mollified. God knows, I had seen such mistresses come and go before. Never before had one of them been my daughter, fed from my own heart’s blood. But I would not think of that, either.

Alais said nothing, but when I raised my glass to her, she bowed her head to me. I wondered if we still might play it off, for if Henry favored her only, but did not acknowledge her as his mistress, all public knowledge of this business could still be avoided. But little did I know her, and her plans.

Henry rose once more but gestured for the court to sit. He raised his tankard of mead to the whole company, and the idle talk fell silent.

“I am happy to announce that I will be going to my hunting lodge at Deptford. There I will see to the needs of the kingdom while indulging in some much-needed respite. While I am gone, Eleanor, my queen, will sit in state at Windsor, and keep you all in fine spirits, until I return.”

I raised my glass to him as if I had known of this all along, as if he had consulted me, as indeed he once would have done. My dissembling was so skilled that even Richard was taken in, and glared at me until I pressed his hand beneath the table.

“My lady Alais, Princess of France, will accompany me into my self-imposed exile. She will give me comfort while I withdraw from public life, to deal with the affairs of state in private.”

Alais stood with him then, and the hall applauded her. I was a beat behind, but as always, I was quick to pick up the tune. I set my goblet down and applauded her also, the knife twisting where she had stabbed me the night before. Still I smiled, while Richard glowered, but even he showed restraint. He did not stalk from the hall as he once would have done.

They sat down, and the king leaned close to fill her glass with wine taken from my own barrels. While he poured my wine for her with his own hand, Alais smiled at him, and rewarded him with a kiss. She did not give him a demure peck as a daughter might, but opened her mouth over his, welcoming his tongue, as he no doubt had taught her to do the night before. One of the younger men let out a whoop to see her do it, then turned pale as he looked at me.

I said nothing, but raised my glass once more to the princess and to my husband. She nodded to me, and I saw admiration for me dawn in her eyes, to live there with the anger that still controlled every move she made. As I watched, she made the mistake of looking at Richard. She saw the pain on his face, pain he did not know how to hide.

I thought in that moment that she would collapse under the weight she had chosen to carry. I thought that she would weep and run from the hall, that she would throw herself down at his feet and beg his forgiveness. But she did none of these things.

As I watched from the corner of my eye, Richard faced her and saw her pain. In my rooms he had been too blinded by anger to see it, to remember who she was, and who she had been to him. He saw it now. He clutched my hand under the table, this time drawing strength from me.

He raised his glass, and did not look at her again, his back straight and his shoulders squared under the heap of bitterness and gall that she and his father had laid upon him. Beneath the table, he still held my hand, but his grip loosened, so that my blood could flow once more.

Music began then, for last night I had started a new tradition of having music at dinner as the rest of the hall ate their meal.

Henry noticed where his lover’s gaze was tending, but he did not rain fury down on her head. He only watched her, his gray eyes on her face, offering her a bit of venison, which she ate, no doubt without tasting it. When the bell for vespers chimed, she leaned close to him and asked him leave to go. Even carnal knowledge of Henry had not turned her from her father’s religion.

Henry’s face darkened, but she did not notice, so sunk was she in her own misery. Henry kissed her, his hand gentle on her cheek as he let her go.

Richard watched Alais leave the hall, but did not move from my side. Henry ate his dinner, but his appetite was gone. Only I would know that, though; of all the courtiers who ate in his hall, only I knew him.

When the dancing began, Henry rose as if to join them. I stood, and Richard stood with me, ready as he always was to support me, whatever might come.

Henry passed beside my chair and I spoke low to him, daring to make a move that I knew was foolhardy. But even I make mistakes; I made only one that night.

“My lord king, will you join the dancing?”

I all but asked him to partner me, there in front of the whole table. He knew what I was offering: an alliance with me and my son, no matter what harlot he chose to take to his bed. He could stand with me, and dance, as we had done the night when he gifted Richard with the Aquitaine.

I could tell from the gray of his eyes that he was thinking of that night, too. For a moment’s breath, I thought I had him.

Henry bowed to me most courteously, and kissed my hand. “My lady wife, I must be gone. I have pressing business elsewhere.”

Henry left the hall, and all the court knew that he went to her.

Richard took up my hand as soon as his father dropped it. The two men I had loved the most said not a word to each other, nor did they glance in the other’s direction. Once Henry stalked out of the hall after the prey that had lately slipped his nets, Richard led me onto the dance floor, smiling down at me.

“Richard, you never smile unless you mean it,” I said. “Has your heart healed so quickly?”

He moved with me in the dance, his smile in place, his eyes never leaving my face. “My heart will never heal, Mother. But do they need to know it?”

The music of my laughter filled that stone hall, so that others joined in, though they did not know the joke. Indeed, there was nothing funny. I laughed so that I would not weep as I took my son’s hand and followed him in the intricacies of the dance.

There would be more moves to make and more dance steps to plan for, before I gave Alais up. That night the whole hall knew I faced yet another challenge to my power with a glittering smile and light laughter. All in that hall knew, as I did, that whatever came before, in the end, I would win.

 

 

I went to the chapel, which that night was empty. The Presence was lit on the altar and an old priest sat near, tending it. I knelt on the cold stone floor, doubling my skirt under me to protect my knees.

I did not take the Mass, as I still had not been shriven. I could not confess, for I did not repent. So I set thoughts of myself and my sin aside, and prayed instead for Richard.

I had wounded him, more deeply than I would have thought possible. As I knelt, my anger at him and his infidelity rose to choke me, until it threatened to block out everything else. Once more I saw the blue, beguiling eyes of Richard’s lover, the warm welcome on her face, her arms opening to draw my betrothed to her as Richard closed the curtain to the alcove behind them.

I turned my eyes on the statue of the Mother by the altar, and reminded myself how She had seen worse things done, and She had forgiven them. This was cold comfort, and blasphemy, so I said a few beads of my father’s rosary, and crossed myself, praying both for France and for my own soul, that I might come to humility once more, that I might feel remorse for what I had done. I was far from remorseful, and I knew it. I was truly Eleanor’s daughter now.

“Do you pray for Richard?”

Henry’s voice drew me from my prayers, caressing me, bringing heat to my face and my loins as if he had touched me. I had not known it was possible to want a man as much as I wanted him. This must be what the Church preached against, this overwhelming lust that blocked out all reason and all prayer. Still, I did not repent.

I stood and crossed myself, turning only then to meet the king’s eyes.

“Well, do you?”

“I do, my lord. And I pray for you. And for this kingdom.”

“Do you regret what you have done?”

I saw the danger in his eyes for the first time. I wondered if, even now, after acknowledging me before the entire court, Henry would turn from me, blighting all my hopes. I stepped toward him, watching his face. He did not back away from me, but he did not move to meet me, either.

“I regret nothing, Henry. You know that.”