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  Tom’s rumpled dress, which marked him as a servant-courier, deceived Philippe. He did not know—as I did—that Tom was an experienced courtier. Tom had been like a brother to King Henry in his younger years. Henry had even knighted him for his service. He went everywhere with us as a family, and I always felt he observed us carefully. His own manners were impeccable. Philippe was in for a surprise. I did not have to feign delight at the familiar face.

  “Sir Owain,” I said, extending my right hand. “Welcome to the court of Paris, dear Tom.”

  Tom smiled, as canny a smile as I had ever seen, and came toward me.

  “You know this man?” Philippe swung his head between us with his nearsighted blink.

  “Brother, permit me to present properly Sir Owain of Caedwyd, former lifelong friend and knight of King Harry of England himself”—I nodded to Tom—“and once a lieutenant in the king’s own army. He is also a friend to France. His name is Owain, but the king always called him Tom, swearing to make an Englishman of him someday. Tom, may I present to you my brother Philippe, King of France.”

  I had known Tom well when I was a child at the English court. I should have recognized the thick Celtic inflection behind his labored Norman French,, even if I had not seen his beaked nose mapped with veins, the broad cheekbones, the wild thatch of red hair graying now. He had grown a red-gray beard in the fifteen years since I had last seen him, and it covered his square Welsh jaw.

  But it was the sight of his hooded left eye that made me certain of his identity. I myself had seen the accident that caused his blindness when I was still a child and Tom was so young a man he hardly had a beard growing. King Harry’s newest falcon had gone wild as they tried to sew its eyes shut for training, and the great bird had clawed Tom’s own eye in its rage. Then both man and bird had had their eyes sewn shut. I never forgot the man’s screams of pain mounting over the cawing of the great wounded bird as the barber-surgeon labored on Tom right there in the open field. I was on my own palfrey, which was pawing the ground impatiently as the shouts rent the air. The other children watched intently, the boys’ faces betraying nothing. But I couldn’t look. I closed my eyes and smelled the sweet field heather, wishing the echoes would end.

  “Indeed,” said Tom, making a low bow no courtier could fault, “you may count me always a friend of the country of Princess Alaïs.”

  “Well … well, then, what do you bring us, fellow? You come from our cousin King John?” At last Philippe was acknowledging the lions of England emblazoned on Tom’s tunic.

  “No, Your Majesty. My letters are from Queen Eleanor at Fontrevault.”

  “Queen Eleanor? What could she want?” The king moved to the hearth, edged out his mastiff, who was warming his bones there, and kicked the cinders back into the fire. “Unless it’s further business about the wedding. She’s been unusually silent on the topic for some time. I thought she was leaving all the preparations to our court here in Paris.”

  “Thanks to you, Tom, for your good service.” I held out my right hand for the letter, and immediately Tom opened his leather pouch and transferred the scroll with its familiar blue-wax seal to me. I made no move to break the seal. Instead I stuffed the small parchment into my left pocket.

  “But why is she writing to you?” Philippe muttered absently as he took his own letter and broke the seal, still standing by the hearth. “No doubt further directives on the wedding,” he grumbled. “She cannot resist managing things.” He shook the scroll open and scanned the script. We waited.

  “God’s good bones, sister, do you know what she’s doing?” After a moment Philippe burst into a rip of laughter, causing the hound to look up yet again. “Old Eleanor. What a queen! She’ll put us all to shame in our own old age. This almost makes me like her!” And he flapped the scroll in my general direction.

  “What piques your interest, brother?” I gathered myself to rise from my comfortable cushions, much more curious to read my own letter than hear about my brother’s. A feeling was creeping over me, that kind of knowing I occasionally experience just before a shift occurs in my world. I could sense Eleanor’s letter, palpable against my leg.

  “She is on the way to Castile to fetch her granddaughter for the wedding with little Louis.” He crowed. “Oh, to have her spirit at her age!”

  “What?” My efforts were momentarily arrested. “How could she? She has more than eighty summers.” I pushed myself upward using my right hand on the firm oak of the chair’s arm.

  He was still reading, shaking his head as he moved to the long cypress table at the side of the room. He tossed the scroll down and picked up the large silver pitcher that displayed his personal royal insignia. Dark Bordeaux splashed as he filled two goblets, and then he paused. After the space of a breath, he poured a third.

  “Who knows? Probably she’ll be carried in a litter, at least over the mountains.” He handed me a goblet, still chortling. I had no choice but to accept, impatient as I was to be gone. “But I wouldn’t put it past her to ride partway herself, keeping up with her knights, no doubt.” He gave Tom the other silver goblet.

  “The wonder is that she’s doing it at all.” He raised his glass high. “Here, Tom of Caedwyd, drink a toast with the Capet family to the fortitude of your mistress, Queen Eleanor, and to the wedding soon to come that will unite both our houses, the English and the French.” He paused, then added softly, “And end this endless war.”

  Tom, who had been standing to the side with a grave expression and folded arms since delivering his letters, raised his cup as graciously as if he drank toasts daily with the king of France. What he made of my brother’s levity, one could not say. His long, honest face was impassive and pleasant, as I always remembered it except for the day of the accident with the falcon.

  “What will Jean Pierre and his men make of this? You sent them to escort the Princess Blanche to Paris. They must be in Castile by now.” I had toasted the queen with a swallow of wine before setting my goblet on the table.

  “That’s the wonderful part.” Philippe was nearly dancing with delight. He picked up the scroll again and waved it around his head. “Jean Pierre will be so put out. He’ll have to wait, of course, once the Spanish court hears Eleanor is coming. A royal escort. Her own grandmother. He could hardly leave before she arrives.” Philippe tossed the scroll into the air and laughed like a boy when it bounced off the head of his hunting hound. “He’s become so pompous since his father died and he inherited the family title. Cooling his heels in Castile while he waits for Queen Eleanor will be the perfect lesson.”

  I had to struggle to keep my composure. If Eleanor only knew that she was assisting my brother in a small revenge on his childhood rival, she would have pulled her thin, well-shaped lips back in that ironic smile that came so easily to her. Pleasing Philippe, her first husband’s son and the bane of her own young princes in war, was not anything she had ever mentioned to me as a priority.

  “Brother, I have enjoyed our conversation. Let me think more on what you have said. Perhaps we can talk on the morrow.” I moved toward the door, but Philippe moved even more quickly, blocking my way.

  “Princess,” he said, bending over my right hand with courtly grace, an odd, formal gesture to make to one’s sister, but so typical of him in his better moments. “A good even to you. We will speak further of your desire to visit our sister in Troyes. And, Alaïs,”—he hesitated for just a fraction of a moment, almost embarrassed—“do not take too much to heart the gossip of the court. They mean you no harm.”

  I nodded, oddly touched, and again made ready to leave. Then I remembered Tom, but before I could speak, Philippe was already issuing instructions to his guard to find a bed and dinner for “our welcome guest.”

  I did not look at Tom, but he stopped me by speaking low as I passed. “My lady, will there be an answer to the queen?”

  “Certes,” I said. “Come to my chambers tomorrow, before the noon hour. You will have your answer then.”

 
.2.

  The Letter

  I moved slowly down the broad, damp stone hall toward my own chambers, careful not to excite the interest of the few courtiers and ladies who passed, bowing. Philippe was wrong, as usual, when he said the court wished me no harm. I was the target of words that came like arrows from every side. The French court resented my outspoken ways and my influence with my brother, the king. And some, because of my deformed left hand, saw me as no more than a witch, with powers they did not understand. I overheard one short, fat, overdressed little toad say once that I made interpretations of dreams and foretold the future. Which was nonsense—well, for the most part.

  Turning a corner, I collided with the queen’s newest maiden, the raven-haired daughter of the Duc de Berry. I couldn’t recall her name, but her wild, uncontrollable bush of dark, curly hair made her stand out among the other young women-in-waiting. She was carrying a bolt of new pale samite, which was so tall in her arms that it completely shielded her face. As a consequence, when she rounded the corner like a young colt, she galloped into me. I nearly toppled backward, only catching myself against the wall at the last minute. The girl dropped her burden.

  “Tiens, tiens,” I scolded, recovering my balance.

  “Excusez-moi, my lady Alaïs,” she said, making a neat curtsy, as if that made up for nearly knocking me over. “But it is the cloth for my new gown. The queen says we must begin the dresses now or they will never be finished in time for the wedding.” She retrieved her burden, flashed a brilliant smile, and darted off, her vision once again obscured. The wedding, the wedding! Always this wedding.

  I was happy to obtain the refuge of my room, where no young women besotted with wedding gowns could career into me at leisure. Mimi and Justine were there, sitting on the floor before the fire. They were so deep in their game of cards they had not noticed that the fire was no longer drawing, and I nearly choked on the musky smell of trapped smoke. They scurried to help, but I waved them out and tended to the draft myself. Then I flung myself into a chair and pulled off my veil. Loosing my braids, I ran my fingers through my hair and allowed currents of rest to flow through me.

  My room was the smallest of the royal apartments, but I treasured it. I had surrounded myself with things I loved. Tapestries woven in Toulouse, images of fruits and strange animals worked in burgundy and gold, covered my walls and floors. Manuscripts rolled and bound, some crisp with age, some sent from monasteries as far away as Iona, filled one whole oak table, and on another—and for this I did love Philippe—lay as much parchment for drawing and as much charcoal as I desired. I could flee into my drawing whenever I chose.

  Now the fire danced in the open draft, and the flames cast light and shadows on the walls. The oil torches set in the recesses near the chair combined with the firelight and candles to give me enough light for reading. Awkwardly I used my good hand to pull Queen Eleanor’s letter from my left side pocket.

  At my request all my gowns had pockets sewn into the left side. My left hand had been withered from birth. I kept it hidden as often as I could. And yet it was part of me, so I must accept it, accept a part of me that had no feeling. I had learned to live with it, if not to love it. And, anyway, the pocket had other uses. It could conceal various small items that came to me while in the public rooms: items that were, like Eleanor’s letter, private.

  I shook open the scroll after I slid my thumbnail under the wax seal. As I did so, a little piece of paper fluttered to the ground. It seemed at first glance to be a diagram of some sort. I retrieved it and set it aside. Then I proceeded to examine the careful writing before me.

  Queen Eleanor had not written to me in the seven years I had been back at my brother’s court. But the elongated, spidery hand in front of me, the hand I had learned to read as a child at her knee, was unmistakably hers. Even the uncertain night’s light did not interfere with my understanding as I carefully made my way through the several heart-stopping pages.

  As I read, my fingers out of old habit toyed with the jeweled pendant that hung on a thin silk cord around my neck. Richard’s betrothal gift to me. It had once been Eleanor’s.

  To Alaïs, daughter of my own heart

  From Eleanor, by the Grace of God Duchess of the Aquitaine and once Queen of England and Lady of All the British Isles:

  We have not corresponded for some time. I will be direct with you now and not waste our time on recriminations for past events.

  I write to ask you to favor me with an errand, one which will not take much of your time but is of the utmost importance. There are certain letters that are hidden at Canterbury Abbey, in the cathedral. These are my letters, written to Archbishop Becket many decades ago, in the days when he and the king were estranged. They are my property.

  I put the letter down. It was a curious opening. And I was amused remembering Eleanor’s habit of always referring to Henry of England, her second husband, as “the king,” as if there were only one king. But whenever she referred to her first husband, my father, she would call him by his full name and title: King Louis of France, as if he—unlike Henry—needed further identification. Then I read on, and all amusement faded.

  I want you to retrieve these letters for me. A friend hid them years ago, so they would not fall into the wrong hands. They rest behind the altar where Becket was slain. I enclose a diagram to show you exactly the place. Retrieving them will be a simple matter.

  You are the only one who can do this. You can travel to England without exciting suspicion, especially under the guise of making a pilgrimage to the martyr’s tomb. You are of French royal blood, formerly of the English king’s household. Even with a small escort, you would not be harmed by the English nor held back by the Normans. You can traverse both sides of the Channel safely.

  I am certain that you still love England, for the sake of our family, if for no other reason. For the sake of Henry, and Richard, if not for my own. Upon these few letters hangs the fate of that kingdom. The Knights Templar are intriguing against John’s throne. They claim he has unfairly pressed the abbeys to help him pay his debts.

  I stopped again, anger rising within me. John had always gouged his subjects, especially the abbeys. Everyone at court knew he was in great need of silver, and to him the abbeys sat across the land like fat little pigeons, ready for the plucking. He needed money for the mounting costs of recovering Eire. If only he had behaved in the first place, when Henry sent him there years ago, Ireland might still be linked to Britain. Now his mother wanted me to provide his bail. I returned to her words, shaking my head.

  If John’s enemies find these letters, they will use them to destroy the king’s—and my own—reputation with the good people of England.

  If there is a rebellion against John, a civil war would most likely follow, and once again we’ll see suffering and destruction in England. I cannot allow civil war if it is in my power to prevent it. Aide-moi maintenant.

  I know you may be tempted to disregard my request. But if you help me, your reward will be great. I have certain information in my possession, information about a child born many years ago. This child disappeared and was supposed dead. I think you were interested in the welfare of this boy. If you want the information I have, I will most willingly give it to you. But first you must help me in this crucial business of the letters.

  I have been told that your anger with me over the past continues. That you blame me for preventing your marriage to Richard. I swear to you on the tears of Christ that I had no part in those events that occurred after Henry separated us and imprisoned me. Please believe me when I tell you that it was not myself who prevented your marriage to our son, Richard.

  I call you now to your responsibilities as my daughter. I will reward you well if you help me. If you choose not to help, your punishment will be your own unquiet conscience.

  Eleanor R.

  I reread the letter, my hand trembling as if with the palsy. I was torn between anger and shock, like a rag shaken in the teeth of a lion. Go
ne was my cool head. The lines blurred fiercely as I reread the script. How long had she known about the child? Why had she never told me? And how dare she of all people use my child’s fate as a carrot to lure me to her witless task?

  I picked up the silver wine goblet next to my chair and hurled it against the wall, watching the red liquid run down the tapestried wall like blood, feeling my wrath ooze from me. And then I rested my head on the back of the chair, giving up my spirit to whatever feelings came.

  I slept poorly that night. My dreams were all of the Plantagenet family. They were on a tournament field. Eleanor, tall, regal, straight-backed and porcelain-skinned as when she was young. Richard, her favored son, tall, auburn-haired like his mother, and beautifully formed, with burgeoning shoulders on his slender, adolescent figure. And of course there was Henry, large, broad-shouldered, gruff, in rough, stained clothes and smelling of horses and the outdoors. In the sheer mass of his figure and his blunt, aggressive features, his power overshadowed the others. They faded from my presence, one by one. All except Henry.

  The sun, already high in the sky, sent a ray across my face. I stirred. Returning to this world, my thoughts flew immediately to the child. What was it that Eleanor could tell me that I did not already know? What gem of information could she offer that would change the past? Or the future? The child was dead.

  I sat up suddenly. What if, by some incredible chance, the child had survived? If there was any possibility at all … if Eleanor had such news, it was my right to have it. And have it I would!

  I moved now with purpose but also with a heavy head, albeit one cooler than was the case the night before. My two timid maids, after tentatively peeking inward to the chamber, advanced slowly toward my bed and helped me rise and dress. They chattered as they brought me cheese and bread and wine for my morning meal. I answered pleasantly enough, but all the while I was considering Eleanor’s strange request. While I waited for Tom of Caedwyd to appear, I riffled absently through a few of the new manuscripts that had come in from Córdoba. It was from Eleanor that I had learned to love the poetry of the Arabs in Hispania.