Canterbury Papers (40 page)

The queen looked down at the letters, which lay quivering in the wind in the middle of the table. Slowly she reached out her index finger and her thumb and drew them toward her, as if they were alive. She pulled her Italian eyeglasses from inside a pocket in the front of her gown, carefully set them on her nose, and looked down at the handwriting on the parchment sheets. We watched her pick them up, glance at them, and discard them, one after the other, which she did with almost ritualistic movements. Her beautiful, oval, aristocratic old face remained expressionless, giving away nothing, as always.

“You sent me on a phantom mission to Canterbury so John could abduct me and find out where my child was. But the joke was on you. For I found these in Old Sarum, and now I know the secret of your soul.”

She looked up from the letters and over her eyeglasses with her most regal stare.

“And what, pray, is that?” she asked.

“Your soul is mean,” I said, surprising even myself.

“And what led you to that conclusion, Alaïs Capet?”

“Not that you foiled my marriage to Richard, although you did that; not even that you sent me into a trap at Canterbury so that John could get his hands on me, although you did that as well. But your soul is mean because you knew that my son was alive and you let me think he was dead all those years. If you had any kindness in you, you would have—”

“Alaïs, this conversation can have no good ending,” Abbess Charlotte interrupted, stretching her long arm in its jeweled sleeve across the table at me, almost in supplication.

“No, let her go on,” Eleanor said. I was looking straight into her eyes, but they gave no signal to me. “Let her read to me the legend of the wrongs I have done her.”

I had the sense to pause here. A voice in the back of my head was murmuring, Well, yes, if we speak of wrongs…

“Perhaps I have done you some wrongs as well,” I admitted, mitigating the frontal assault I had been mounting. “But there is no wrong comparable to keeping a mother from her child.”

At this Eleanor stood, pushing back her high oak chair.

“Unless it is the wrong of the child who murders the love of the mother.” The room became silent. Outside the open window, the birds were still. Suddenly her palsy seemed to disappear, and she walked around the table toward me. I stood to face her, not afraid but with a fast heart. “Unless it is the wrong of the child who is nurtured by the mother and then turns on her, to the very act of taking her own husband from her.”

I said nothing.

“You ask me why I prevented your marriage to Richard? You dare to ask me after you replaced me in my own marriage bed?” She had reached me now. I did not even see her arm come up, so swiftly did she strike me across the face. To my credit I moved not one whit backward at the strike. She could have done it again and I would have remained as motionless. For one long moment, I thought she might. But instead she turned away.

Both William and Charlotte had risen, but I held up my left hand to them. With my live hand, I grabbed the queen's arm and forced her to turn back to me, though not enough to hurt her at all.

She opened her mouth to speak, but I held up my withered hand to her as well. It was always—as I have said before—an act that arrested conversation.

“You know I had no choice with the king.” I spit out my words. “I was his prisoner every bit as much as you were. It wouldn't have mattered whether I wanted to be his concubine or not. He would have what he chose. But what matters, in the end, is that he was good to me at a time when I had lost everything.”

To my complete horror, I heard my voice breaking and felt hot tears rising, tears I had felt only twice before in all the years since my child was taken from me. But I pressed on, through my sobbing.

“You have reason in your anger. I did a terrible thing, and I ask your pardon. But at least in my actions, confused as they were at the time, I had an honest heart. I came to love the king. And I knew you had not loved him for a very long time.”

The queen stood impassively before me, but it was my aunt who came to my side and put her arm around me. She spoke to the queen in a matter-of-fact manner as she held my shaking body.

“Truly, Eleanor, there is enough blame on all sides. Alaïs is right. Your love for Henry was dead. Indeed, you hated him. You know it was only your pride that was wounded.” The abbess gently pressed me to her. I saw William standing, his arms folded, watching me gravely across the table. “Why not stop this high-handed playacting and tell Alaïs honestly what you knew. Put this matter behind you both.” My aunt could feel me in danger of collapsing, and she guided me into the chair.

I buried my head in my folded arms, my face hidden, silent now but unable to stop the warm water flowing from my eyes. Then I felt the queen's hand briefly on my neck, a gentle brushing action as she passed by. When I looked up, I saw her back in her chair. I saw also what the effort to confront me had cost her, with the shaking of the palsy back and more pronounced than before. She passed her slender, blue-veined fingers across her eyes and then looked at me. She began to speak in quiet, measured, almost musical tones, as if chanting plainsong.

“At the time, Alaïs, I did not know that your child lived. If I had known, I would have told you. Although I was angry with you, I never meant harm to either you or the child.” She pulled a piece of lawn from her inner sleeve and passed it across the table to me. I took it, as a sort of peace offering, and used it to blot my hot, wet face.

“I heard of your affair with the king while I was imprisoned in Old Sarum, as you know from the letters you found. But I, too, was told by him that the child had died. He swore to me on his father's grave. He was most convincing. He had one of his famous temper tantrums when I questioned the truth of his avowal. I think”—she paused here, as if searching in the dim reaches of her mind—“that he genuinely wanted to protect your son. If everyone thought the child dead, he would be safe, Henry reasoned. And so he was, for years.”

“But I was the child's mother,” I almost wailed, ashamed of my lack of control even as I spoke. “Why did he keep this from me?”

“You? You were the most dangerous of all,” she said in that hard, quiet voice. “You were the one who could least be trusted, for keeping the babe would be your concern above all. And if you did so, others were bound to learn of it. And therein lay the threat.”

“How did you find out he was still alive?”

“John uncovered the secret in recent weeks. As he was gathering information on the Templars, to use to persuade them not only to relent in their pressure on him but to back him financially, he was told by a trusted informer that the highest officers in the Templar ranks were shielding one who could be a threat to the throne.” Here her eyes flashed at William, who seemed unperturbed, examining his fingernails.

“If John spent more time governing the country as a good king should and less time running around trying to identify and hold up his enemies, he'd have fewer of them,” he drawled.

“John is trying to be a good king,” Eleanor said, “and anyway, who do you have in your officers' trust who has such a loose and flapping tongue? I suggest you look to your own house and straighten it before you inspect mine.” She had no sooner begun her harangue than William brought his fist down on the table.

“God's bones, Queen Eleanor! Stop shielding that overgrown juvenile from the consequences of his own actions. It's going to wreck the kingdom that you and Henry worked so hard to consolidate. Do you want to see your own efforts lost in your lifetime? Whose side are you on? You can't be wanting that impetuous little rabbit Philippe Auguste to take all of England too?” He seemed to remember us momentarily and glanced my way. “Sorry,
Princesse,”
he muttered. “Sorry, Abbess.”

Eleanor sighed. My aunt rolled her eyes heavenward. And the earnest, intelligent face of François crossed my vision. For just a moment, I felt a brush of sympathy for Eleanor, the mother of so unworthy a son.

“All right, suppose I do agree to convince John that there is no child, no little bastard brother that grew old enough to threaten him. Suppose I tell him that such a child, in truth, lived once but died in his infancy. John will ask me how I have come upon this information.” She placed her hands upward on the table. “What do I tell him?”

“The grave has been found,” William said without a pause, as if he had been thinking of nothing but this since he rose that morn. “The grave was in the north of England, with markings that are unmistakable. And a letter from the grand master of the Templars was intercepted and delivered to you, acknowledging these facts. I myself will pen the letter, if you bring me parchment,” he added.

“Write the letter,” Eleanor said as she signaled one of two servants hovering by the doorway to approach the table. “John will have it by nightfall, along with my own.”

“Once he has convinced you that he believes, and gives up this wretched search, I'll sign the bond for his loans.” William folded his arms in front of his chest. Almost as an afterthought, he added, “Oh, and he must release the abbeys from the quarantine he has placed on them. They must be free from this unfair tax he levied last year.”

“That may be even more difficult,” Eleanor said, a smile breaking her somber expression. “John loves to oppress abbeys.”

“John has always loved to oppress anyone,” I said, joining uninvited.

She turned her head stiffly toward me, as if she suddenly remembered something. “Alaïs, I did not send you to Canterbury so that John could abduct you.”

“No? Then why?”

“Tell her why, William. It was your doing.” Her voice quavered, as if her palsy extended to her throat.

“I must confess it was,” he said cheerfully. “I let it be known at Fontrevault that certain letters from Queen Eleanor to Becket had been discovered but that we were allowing them to rest behind the altar where they had been found.”

“For what reason did you give out this information?”

“So that John would be distracted from this business about Henry's son and come in pursuit of the letters for his mother. He would not want anything damaging to come to light about his mother's relationship with Becket whilst he was in such a tenuous position as king. The people might revolt.”

“So you thought John would take the bait and raid Canterbury. And then what? You would catch him in the act and embarrass him?”

My voice must have betrayed my amusement, for William looked momentarily chagrined. Then he shrugged, a benighted look on his rosy face.

“God's good feet, a stupid plan if I ever heard one! And this is what the great Templars produce when they play at cloaks and daggers.” I had to laugh out loud.

“Eleanor could see through that one,” Charlotte said. “So we decided to send our own messenger to retrieve the letters. One we could trust. And one who would not arouse suspicion.”

“I never dreamed she would send you,” William said to me, not laughing now.

“And to get you to go, we had to promise dramatic news.” Eleanor added. “I had only the rumors about the Templars to go on, but it was something.”

“And would you have told me that?”

“Yes, I would have kept my word.”

“But John's throne…”

“I didn't think you would truly find any other news. The Templars are a close-knit group. I never thought they would give you enough information to find the child.” She looked at William with her imperious expression. “I hadn't counted on you.”

“Life is full of surprises for all of us, Your Highness.” He spoke to her but looked at me.

“So I will have those Becket letters now, as part of our agreement here,” Eleanor said, tapping her fingernail on the table. And as if he expected it, William produced a small roll of letters from his worn leather purse.

“All right, so the child is dead and I have the letters to Becket. You will sign the bond before you leave this house.”

“No. I will sign the bond when I have John's assurances that he will lift the tax on the abbeys and accept that there is no one who can threaten his throne other than himself. I will let you know where I rest for the next fortnight. You can send the papers there.” William began to rise.

“What is to stop John from finding you and cutting your throat in your sleep?” I could not forbear from asking.

“Even John is not so great a fool as to kill the grand master of the Knights Templar of England and Normandy.” The corners of William's mouth twitched. “I have one more piece of news for you, which Queen Eleanor may not be able to give you.”

I rose, too, although, to tell the truth, I did not even know if I was to leave with him or stay with the old women.

“Eleanor did not prevent your marriage to Richard, as you said earlier. It was Henry himself who refused. Even though you were no longer living with him, he would not allow Richard to have you.”

“Henry?”

“Yes. I was there. He and Richard had their last confrontation before Henry's death at Chinon. I was there and witnessed all of their conversations. Philippe was there, too, and both Richard and Philippe demanded of Henry that he allow the betrothal to be fulfilled. Richard was to have you as his bride. And Henry absolutely refused to give you up. Richard knew that you'd had Henry's child, but he wanted you anyway. Whether it was a deep love or that his pride was wounded, he demanded you. When Henry refused, Richard vowed that his father had now broken every oath and promise he had made to him and that it would be a fight to the death.” William picked up his heavy velvet-and-fur cloak, which had fallen to the floor, shook it out, and threw it over his shoulders. “It's hard to forgive Richard's turning on his father in his last days, but in some ways that scene always made it easier for me to understand.”