Captive Queen (63 page)

By all reports, Matilda was contentedly producing baby after baby in Germany, and Joanna seemed to have settled down happily in Sicily, although something Ranulf let slip had disturbed Eleanor.

“They say that King William has adopted many of the customs of his Moorish subjects,” he told her, “and that Queen Joanna lives entirely in seclusion.”

“Don’t tell me he has a harem!” Eleanor had interjected sharply. She’d seen harems in Constantinople and the lands of the Turks during the long-ago crusade, and knew what ills they concealed.

Ranulf looked ill at ease. “I did hear something of the sort,” he disclosed, “but the Queen his wife has her own apartments.”

So poor Joanna was having to deal with her lord’s infidelity right from the first, Eleanor thought, dismayed. If she had been given her head, she would have hastened across the seas and snatched her daughter back, but there was no hope of that. She must endure the knowledge of Joanna’s situation, just as Joanna herself was having to learn to bear it. But how uncivilized of King William to expect his wife to tolerate a harem in the palace! Eleanor was fuming inside.

   It was Ranulf Glanville who informed Eleanor when John was made nominal King of Ireland, and when her daughter Eleanor was sent to Castile to marry King Alfonso. It was hard to believe that little Eleanor, with her heart-shaped face, was nineteen and a bride. How the years had flown—and so many of them, latterly, wasted. She felt weary with the futility of it all.

“The Lord Geoffrey has been knighted by the King,” her custodian told her one rainy July evening.

“I rejoice that my lord now enjoys good relations with our sons,” Eleanor replied, remembering that Henry and his three eldest had kept such a magnificent court together last Christmas at Angers that it was still spoken of with wonder.

“God be thanked, they are at peace at last.” Ranulf’s sentiments were genuine. “I hear that the Young King has been rushing around all over France fighting in tournaments and carrying off the prizes. His fame is sung everywhere.”

“Henry will like that,” Eleanor observed.

“Indeed he does. In fact, the King has been so delighted by the Young King’s many triumphs that he has restored to him in full all the lands and possessions he had taken away.” It did Eleanor’s heart good to hear that, but—as always—there was, underlying her pleasure, a nagging sadness and resentment that she herself was never embraced by Henry’s evident desire to set things right.

Richard, she later heard, had achieved great victories in Aquitaine.

“He is now acknowledged one of the great generals of our age,” Ranulf told her proudly.

Yes, she thought, but at what cost? What violence and bloodshed has he committed, at Henry’s behest, to earn that reputation? Her heart bled for Aquitaine, and she could take little joy in Richard’s fame, although she was gratified to hear that he, like the Young King before him, had been received with honor by his father. Please God, matters were now mended between them.

   “My lady, the King of France is dead,” announced Amaria, coming into the royal lodgings with a basket of autumn herbs for the simples she liked to make, swearing by her own remedies for aching joints and blistered heels.

A great wave of sadness engulfed Eleanor. Whatever his failings, Louis had once, many years in the past, been her husband. She had done him many wrongs, and there had been some bitterness between them, but he’d been a good and devout man who stood by her and her sons in their hour of need, and done many good deeds in his days—and now he was no more.

She went to her chapel and sank to her knees to pray for Louis; he had been a saintly man, and surely his soul was even now on its winged flight to Heaven. She had known he was ill. The year before, he came to England on a pilgrimage to St. Thomas’s shrine at Canterbury, in company with the thousands who now flocked to keep vigil at Becket’s tomb, hoping for one of the miracles that the saintly Archbishop was widely reputed to work. Louis had needed such a miracle. He was in poor health and not really fit enough to make the journey. But Henry afforded him a splendid reception, and they went together in procession to the cathedral, where Louis made offerings of a great ruby ring and other precious gifts.

Then he had hastened back to France to prepare for the crowning of his heir, Philip Augustus, now grown almost to manhood. Louis had not been there to see it. A massive apoplexy suddenly struck him down and effectively ended his reign. He had lingered for more than a year, as his crafty and ambitious son seized the reins of government—and now, poor shadow of his former self, he had gone to his much-deserved rest. His former wife paid him the compliment of her tears as she looked back on his virtues and tried to forget that he had once been a timorous young man who drove her to distraction because he was better suited to the cloister than to wielding a scepter and doing his duty by her in bed.

   “It’s odd that all that talk of divorce suddenly died down,” Eleanor reflected as she and Amaria sat at their embroidery in a window embrasure, enjoying an unseasonably warm breeze. Over the years, she had painstakingly taught her maid the art of plying her needle to decorative effect, and Amaria proved a willing pupil. They were now working on an altar frontal for the chapel.

Amaria remained silent, but that was nothing unusual. She had the peasant’s way of few words.

“The last I heard, Henry had appealed to the Pope, but that was years ago,” Eleanor went on. “He must have thought better of it. Nevertheless, being thwarted by His Holiness should not stop him from marrying Richard to Alys. They should have been wed long since.” She rethreaded some red silk through her needle, then looked up. To her consternation, she saw that Amaria’s eyes were filled with tears.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Nothing,” muttered the woman.

“No one weeps for nothing,” Eleanor said. “Have you had bad news?”

Amaria shook her head. “Really, my lady, ’tis nothing.”

“Now you have me worried!” her mistress declared. “Tell me what troubles you. I command it!”

“You won’t like it,” Amaria said in a low voice.

“Tell me!” ordered Eleanor, really worried now. “Has someone died?” Her heart was instantly pounding. If it was one of her children, she did not think she could bear it.

Amaria braced herself. “There be rumors that the King has got the Princess Alys with child.” She omitted to mention that these rumors had been fueling the public imagination for years now, and that they alleged far more than she’d revealed.

Eleanor caught her breath. So … Everything suddenly became clear. She instinctively knew that rumor spoke truth—or something like it. How could Henry have stooped so low? To compromise the honor of a princess of France was bad enough, but when that princess was his son’s betrothed—that was another matter entirely! Disgust consumed her.

When she regained her composure, another thought struck home. How long had this been going on? Was it the reason why she had heard no more of a divorce? And had she been the only person left in ignorance of what was going on? If Amaria had heard these rumors, then it was a certainty that most of England had too.

She wondered if Louis had known, if he had spoken out. But surely not. He would hardly have gone to Becket’s shrine with Henry in the circumstances. And Richard—where did he stand in all this? She was outraged on Richard’s behalf, and incensed against Henry.

She turned to Amaria, who was concentrating furiously on her sewing.

“What more do you know of this matter?” she probed.

“Only what that rumor said, lady,” Amaria lied. She was not about to repeat the gossip that accused Alys of having borne the King at least three children that died, or the shocked expletives of people scandalized to hear of Henry’s vile behavior. Nor would she say anything of those other rumors … Had it been the King who had put them about, perhaps seeking yet another pretext to put Eleanor away—this time for good?

But Eleanor was ahead of her. “Talking of rumors,” she said, resolutely moving on from the horrible gossip about Henry, “I overheard Fulcold”—the chamberlain—“talking with Master FitzStephen the other day. They were in the outer chamber, but the door had been left open. I could not catch everything they said, but I am sure that I heard Fulcold say, ‘All the world knows that Queen Eleanor murdered Rosamund.’ And Master FitzStephen, dour old fellow that he is, actually laughed, so I supposed the remark to have been made in jest. But what an odd thing to say. How could I murder Rosamund, shut up as I have been these seven years?”

Amaria mentally girded her loins; Eleanor could almost see her doing it.

“There have been tales to that effect,” she said at length.

“What tales? How could there be?” She could not credit it. Why should people always believe ill of her, especially when there was not the slightest justification for it? This really was too much!

“Aye, there be all kinds of silly stories. I took little notice of them, they was so far-fetched, and as I knew them to be false—and I said so often, mark ye, my lady! But folks likes to believe such things.”

Eleanor knew that. They livened up the daily round of ordinary people’s lives, provided the excitement that was lacking elsewhere. But she hated the idea of herself being the focus of such stupid and unjust calumnies.

“Tell me what they say of me!” she demanded, her anger rising.

“They say the King kept the Lady Rosamund—the Fair Rosamund, they call her—”

“Putrid by now, I should think!” Eleanor interrupted.

“They say you hated her, my lady, and that the King kept her shut up in a tower at Woodstock, for fear you would discover her, and had a maze put around the tower, so that you could never find the way in.”

“There was a maze, but it was built for her pleasure,” Eleanor said. “This is just nonsense.”

“Aye, it is nonsense, I know. Then you are supposed to have found a clue of thread or silk from the lady’s sewing basket, and followed it through the maze until you discovered her in her tower.”

“And then I supposedly murdered her!” Eleanor sniffed furiously. “I should like to know how!”

“Saving your pardon, but there are lots of gruesome stories,” Amaria admitted. “Some say you stripped her naked and roasted her between two fires, with venomous toads on her breasts; some say you let her bleed to death in a hot bath, some that you poisoned her, and others that you stabbed her with a dagger after putting out her eyes. I say some people have a vivid imagination.”

Eleanor had been listening to all this in mounting horror. “How could people think these things of me?” she cried. “It is all lies, vile lies. Yet they believe it, against all logic. I dare say some think this supposed murder is the cause for which I am still shut up.”

“A few do,” Amaria confirmed. “Although I have heard other people scoff at the rumors. Not everyone believes them, mark me.”

“But some do, and that is what offends me!” Eleanor cried. “How am I to defend myself against such slanders? I am powerless. Surely people realize that I could not possibly have had anything to do with Rosamund’s death.”

As the words were spoken, a salutary inner voice reminded her that she had once taken pleasure in imagining herself doing vengeful violence on Rosamund’s body—and that she had rejoiced in the most un-Christian manner on hearing news of her rival’s death. But I would never actually have done her harm, she told herself; God knows, I shrink from bloodshed. And when I was told of her sufferings before she died, I realized that what is written in Scripture is true: Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord: I will repay. And then I felt remorse for my unseemly joy in her death,
and
a belated pity for her.

“I will write to the King,” she vowed. “I will acquaint him of these terrible calumnies and demand that he publicly refute them. He must know that, even had I had the opportunity, I do not have it in me to do such a thing.”

Ralph FitzStephen looked dubious when the Queen asked for writing materials so she could send a letter to the King. She had never ventured to write to Henry before, and he wasn’t sure if it was permitted or not; but, in the absence of specific instructions, he grudgingly gave his consent.

Eleanor’s message was to the point:

“Eleanor, by the grace of God, Queen of England, to her Lord Henry, King of England, greetings,” she began. Then she simply said it had come to her notice that rumor unjustly accused her of murdering Rosamund de Clifford, and asked him to issue a public proclamation declaring her innocence. Left like that, it looked a bit abrupt, so she added two short sentences: “I trust you are in health. The Lord have you in His keeping.” Then she signed her name, showed it to a suspicious FitzStephen, and sealed it.

There was no response.

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