The Queen's Pawn (8 page)

It seemed that she would speak of Richard, and our many sons, but instead she said, “You are a brave girl. I am proud of you.”

Her unexpected praise warmed me more than mulled wine. My heart swelled with my next breath, but I did not weep. Eleanor had taught me that, too.

“Shall we have another song before we go down to dinner?” she asked.

“I would sing one for you,” I said.

Eleanor’s eyes widened. “Such talent, little princess. How is it that I did not know of it?”

“It is a small gift, but I would give it to you.”

“You must never hide your talents, Alais. Only your failings.”

I smiled wryly, my eyes sparkling. “But, my lady queen, I have none.”

Eleanor laughed at that, as I had meant her to. I sang for her a sweet song my nurse had taught me at home in Paris, before I was sent away.

The queen then honored me by taking me down to the great hall herself, her hand on my arm. All the court bowed to us as we passed, and parted before us as we strode to the dais, where the high table stood. Richard sat at the head of the table already. He stood when he saw us, and bowed as the others did.

I ignored the people below the dais, but to Richard, I offered a curtsy.

“Welcome, Mother. Princess Alais.”

His voice thickened a little when he spoke my name. I met his eyes, and saw warmth in their blue depths as well as his honor for me.

“Good evening, Richard.” Eleanor raised her cheek for his kiss. “It is good to have my son here before me, to welcome me to my own table.”

“It is good to sit with you once more, Mother. There is no gracious spot in England unless you are there.”

Eleanor laughed and leaned close to me. “You see, Alais, he will charm you before you know it.”

“He already has, Your Majesty.”

I spoke low, my tone soft, but my bold words shocked him. Richard almost turned from me, but managed not to. A hot blush crept up his cheeks, and into his red gold hair. For the first time, I was reminded that he was only fifteen.

Eleanor laughed again, and I sat in the chair that Richard drew out for me. Unlike my father’s court, where all but the king sat on benches, everyone at Eleanor’s high table had a chair and cushions. I sank into this luxury, grateful that I was no longer eating on a bench in the nunnery, listening in silence while the Word of God was read aloud. I loved the Scripture, but in Eleanor’s court, I had already learned that I loved music more.

Eleanor sat beside me, and Richard took the chair on her left hand. He set about cutting meat for both of us, and was as gracious and charming as any man I have ever known. He spoke of the company, and of how the court was glad to welcome me among them. I knew that Eleanor’s ladies were not particularly pleased that I was there, as she forced them all to give precedence to me, but I did not correct him.

The queen knew my thoughts without my voicing them. She smiled her wicked smile, and changed the subject to the duchy of the Aquitaine, and of how Richard would be a credit to her there.

I did not listen close to this talk, for the meat was good, and still hot from the spit. I had not eaten much meat in the nunnery, only at Christmas and at Easter. The venison was succulent, its juices threatening to drip down into my borrowed sleeve. As I licked my fingers, I found Richard staring at me.

Eleanor tapped my hand, offering a bit of meat from her own knife. Though she smiled, her eyes were cool, her thoughts shuttered so that I could not guess at them.

Before I could wonder at the sudden change in her demeanor, Richard rose from his place. He laid his hand on Eleanor’s arm, and kissed her. “With your permission, Mother,” he said, his low voice courteous.

She waved her hand without answering him, which Richard took for assent. I watched her, though, and wondered if he was right.

I heard the strum of a lute and I turned, surprised, for the fruit had not yet been brought out. We were still eating the meat.

Mother Sebastian had taught me the manners of the court, as she had known that one day I would go there. She told me quite clearly that no musician came into the hall until the fruit had been served.

I met Richard’s eyes, where he stood at the edge of the dais. I felt the warmth of his gaze on my skin. Perhaps there were different rules in Aquitaine, and Eleanor had brought them to her own court at Winchester.

The hall fell silent as soon as it was seen that it was the prince who stood to sing and not a troubadour. Even the simpering women at the queen’s table stopped their gossiping.

Richard looked to his mother as if for permission again, and Eleanor bowed her head. The hall filled with applause at once, the polite applause that was required when a prince stood to raise his voice in song. Such a thing would never have happened in my father’s court. Even as a child, Philippe Auguste would sooner have cast himself into the fire than raise a song in company.

I leaned back against the cushion of my chair. I was shocked when the prince took up the lute himself.

“I would sing for my betrothed, if you would indulge me.”

I felt all the eyes in the hall on me then, but I did not heed them. I kept my gaze on Richard’s face. My breath lodged in my chest, and I thought I would not draw another.

Richard’s voice was sweet, the sweetest I had ever heard. A true silence fell over that hall as he sang. The nattering women and loosemoraled men stopped dead in their talk, and not because Richard was prince. When Richard sang, even those people could not turn away.

The song he sang for me was in the langue d’oc, the language spoken in the Aquitaine. I could make out only one word in three, but I knew that he sang of love.

When his song was done, Richard fell silent, and his hand drew out one last note on his lute. That note filled the hall, and hung there, mesmerizing all of us, so that we forgot to move.

Then he bowed, his eyes seeking mine. I wiped my tears away with the kerchief Eleanor had given me, the soft linen cloth that bore her crest. Richard did not smile, for the moment between us was too solemn for that. Instead, he turned to the queen, and smiled on her.

Eleanor led the applause. In spite of my tears, I had the sense enough to join it.

“My son,” the queen said. “You surpass us all in honor.”

Richard bowed once more before taking his place beside her. He did not look at me again.

“You see, Alais, I do not lie. My son will turn your head, before you even know he’s done it.”

Richard, who had stood before all the court and sung from his heart, blushed now to hear his mother speak of him to me.

“He has already done so, Your Majesty”

Eleanor turned from Richard, and looked at me. “So I see, little princess. So I see.”

 

 

That night I dreamt of Richard’s song. His voice followed me into my dreams, so that even as I woke, the last note of his song was still with me. It made my sleep sweet, and my heart light, to know that such a man had been chosen for me by God.

But when I looked to Marie Helene in the morning to bring my breakfast and to laugh with me over the cattiness of the queen’s ladies, especially Angeline, Marie Helene could not speak. Her throat had closed up overnight with a swift cold that she assured me with croaks would soon fade. I sent for teas to soothe her, but the water the servants brought was lukewarm, and the tea only some valerian root from the simples garden.

Since my own gowns had not yet come, I drew on Eleanor’s beautiful emerald silk once more, and set out to find the simples garden myself. I knew enough of herb lore from my time in the nunnery to help my friend.

For such a large castle, Winchester had very few servants. Or perhaps, more likely, they simply saw me coming and ducked out of my way. It took me almost an hour to find a door that led out into the sunshine of the morning.

When I stepped outside, instead of the kitchen garden, I came upon roses in the center of a walled courtyard. It was a small garden, the same garden I could see from the window in my room. Though surrounded on all sides by stone and damp, there was enough sunlight for a few hours a day for the roses to flourish, red ones, and pink ones, and even some roses of white.

I marveled at how such beauty could grow in the midst of such dark confinement.

I stood among the flowers, breathing in the scent of their perfume. Most were open, though spring had not yet turned to summer. I lifted my face to the sky, to take in the rays of sun that came down over the high walls.

Richard found me there, when my thoughts were turned on nothing but the way the warm sunlight felt on my face.

“Good day,” he said.

Richard stood just a few feet away from me. Either he was very quiet when he moved, or my thoughts had been far away, for I never heard him until he spoke.

“God be with you,” I said. The warmth of my dreams came upon me then, and the joy he had brought me with his music.

His blue eyes met mine, and it seemed he, too, was remembering his song. I savored Richard’s tall, proud grace, the way his stance spoke of who he was and what he was born to. It was a pity that he was a younger son, and would never be king.

“Where is your waiting woman?” he asked.

I thought of Marie Helene, alone in my bed. I realized then that I should have called another of the queen’s women to walk with me. A princess could not walk alone unencumbered.

“She is in bed,” I said. “Her throat is sore.”

Richard did not chide me for my folly in walking alone, though he had the most to lose if I was accosted. He nodded and said nothing.

The warmth between us was still there, as it had been the night before, but now, as we stood alone with no one else watching, he was too shy to speak. So I spoke for both of us.

“I am looking for the simples garden,” I said. “I must make Marie Helene a tisane to help her throat heal.”

He smiled at this, thinking that surely I knew nothing useful, nothing that could heal another. It also seemed to amuse him that I was out of my rooms, in service of my waiting woman. But Marie Helene was my friend, my only friend besides the queen at this court. I would not watch her suffer and do nothing.

“I know of the simples garden,” he said. “I can take you there.”

The sun on the roses made their petals look like velvet. I thought to take a flower with me, my fingertips brushing the petals of one red rose. In the end, the stem was too thick for me to break, and I left the rose in the sun. I promised myself that I would come back, and look at them again.

Richard led me back into the castle keep, and as we walked together, he shortened his strides to mine. “You seem to have a care for your servants,” Richard said.

“I have never had a waiting woman before, not one that was all my own. I had a nurse in France.”

I thought of Katherine, of her sweet smile and warm hands. “But she was responsible for me.”

“And you feel responsible for your woman here,” he said, as if to finish my thought.

“Yes. Marie Helene is in my charge, for however long she serves me. I cannot leave her to suffer.”

“You could call for a new lady to wait on you,” Richard said. “My mother would give you one.”

“I would not turn Marie Helene away. She is my friend.”

“It is good to have a friend in a new place,” he said.

I saw his loneliness then, and it called to the loneliness within me. Just as I had been alone all my life, sent to marry among my father’s enemies to serve the throne of France, so had Richard been alone, except when his mother was with him. He, too, served as I did. He worked always for the good of Eleanor, placing her needs and the needs of the duchy of Aquitaine above his own.

He met my eyes then, and I did not look away. Our gazes held, and he seemed to see behind my eyes into my thoughts. I felt, in that brief, blessed moment, that he understood me. Since I was a child, I had known that I must marry this man, and part of me had feared it. Now I saw that we might build something together, something that politics and all its harsh necessity could not touch. Together, we might build a home, and find some peace amid the constant furor of royal courts, with their backbiting and their shadows. Together, we might love each other as a man and woman, not as a prince and princess.

Richard took my hand, and held it in his own. “My mother is also your friend, as I am”

I did not know what to say for my breath had gone. Tears rose to my eyes unbidden, though Eleanor had taught me never to cry. But my heart wept at the thought of finding a haven in my new life, a haven with my husband; my eyes wept, too.

Richard stood beside me, my hand in his. He did not speak of my tears, and I felt that to him they did me honor. He reached down and wiped them away gently with one large finger. The sweetness of the gesture moved me more than anything else he might have done. I wiped my eyes with my free hand, and I smiled.

“Eleanor has been like a mother to me,” I said. “All I am, all I will ever be, I owe to her.”

His smile lit his face, as if dawn had broken over a plain of darkness.

“It is so with me as well,” he said. “In all the dark places of my childhood, my mother was the only light. My music, my poetry, even my prowess in war, all were gifts from her hands.”

I knew this was an admission that he would never have given to anyone else. Anyone else would have questioned that: a woman giving a man the gift of war. But I knew what he meant, for even in my cloister, I had heard of Richard’s heroism in war. He meant that Eleanor had taught him the art of war by teaching him to nurture art within his soul. His music, his poetry, and his flair for battle, all came from the same place, the creative fount that Eleanor had nurtured, as she had left me nurtured in the Abbey of St. Agnes. Nowhere else would a woman have been taught to paint as I had been. No other nunnery would have allowed it. Always, Eleanor gave the best to those she best loved, holding nothing back.