The Battle of the Queens (18 page)

‘That was not right, was it, my lady?’ asked Blanca. ‘Should a son be taught to hate his father?’

‘My mother did what she considered right for herself. She never obeyed rules. Nay, my child, it would have been better for all if she had taught him tolerance. But she is a proud woman, the proudest I ever knew. She is very old now. Yet she comes here. I tremble fearing that she may not survive the journey. But when her family need her she will be there.’

‘Why do we need her?’ asked Urraca. ‘Cannot the marriage be made without her?’

‘It is a very important marriage.’ Their mother lowered her voice. ‘Far far more important than that of your sister. Your grandmother is eager that nothing shall go wrong, so she will take you to the Court of France and see you married herself.’

‘Does she think the King will not let me marry his son if she did not insist?’

‘In these matters, certain details can go wrong and this may spoil arrangements. Your grandmother wishes nothing to go wrong. She is very eager for this match. Therefore she will take you to the Court of France and see the ceremony performed perhaps … or at least make sure that it will be performed.’

‘So I shall travel with her,’ murmured Urraca.

‘Be of good cheer, my child,’ said her mother. ‘Life will become wonderful for you. You are going to a great country. You have a wonderful destiny before you.’

Blanca asked: ‘Shall I have a great destiny too, my lady?’

‘I doubt it not, my love,’ answered Eleanor. ‘But Urraca’s bridegroom will be the King of France and there are few greater destinies than that.’

Each day they watched from the castle turrets for the coming of their grandmother.

When she came she was every bit as formidable as they had imagined.

She came riding at the head of the party and she called out as soon as she entered the courtyard: ‘Where is my daughter?’

Eleanor the younger was there. The old Queen had dismounted and taken her daughter into her arms. She held her tightly and would not release her for some time. Then she drew back to look at her and declared she seemed in good health and turning to Alfonso she said in a loud ringing voice: ‘And I should have wanted an answer from you, my lord, if my daughter had not been well cared for.’

‘My lady mother has not changed,’ said Eleanor; and she kept the old Queen’s hands in hers as they came into the castle.

What feasting there was! Each day the hunters had brought in fine bucks and they had been baking in the kitchens in readiness for the arrival of the old Queen. Her daughter wished her to rest awhile but she would not hear of it; and she sat at the table while the troubadours played and sang their songs and she took a lute too and with the minstrels sang the songs she had sung as a girl; and it seemed she was very happy to be with her daughter.

It astonished the girls that she could be so tender; they had thought such a formidable old woman would never look so lovingly on any as she did on their mother.

She had eyed the girls rather sharply, and when they had both kissed her hand, they felt awkward under her scrutiny. She had asked of their mother: ‘You have brought them up well, have you? Their manners must be graceful. You know the French.’

My mother said that she did not think even the French would have aught of which to complain.

At which their grandmother turned her attention from her granddaughters and gave herself up to contemplating her daughter.

That night the two girls lay on their pallets and talked about the future. They were both sad, yet excited. It was hard to imagine life without each other – yet Berengaria had gone and they scarcely missed her now.

‘I wish,’ said Blanca, ‘that we did not have to grow up.’

‘And there are years and years ahead of us,’ sighed Urraca, ‘if we are going to be as old as our grandmother.’

Then they talked of what they thought it would be like at the Court of France and Blanca was sad for she said that all the excitement would be Urraca’s and it is easier to accept change when it is exciting.

‘But your turn will come, Blanca. I wonder whom they will find for you?’

‘Of one thing we are certain: it cannot be such a grand match as yours.’

In the next few days they saw a great deal of their grandmother, who made a point of being with them and drawing them out. Blanca had always been quicker than her sisters to grasp a point; her mother had told their father that it was because of her youth and she felt the need to keep up with her sisters. However she had often surpassed them and this sharpness of wit quickly became apparent to Eleanor of Aquitaine.

When she walked in the gardens she would select Blanca on whose arm to lean. ‘Come and walk with me, child,’ she would say. ‘I need an arm on which to lean.’

Then she would ask about life in Castile and what their tutors taught them; and she would shoot questions at Blanca and sometimes was amused at the answers she received. After supper when the candles with their cotton wicks flickered in the sconces she would ask Blanca to sing for her; and sometimes she would join in the song. She had a firm voice which belied her years.

‘Your mother has taken a great fancy to Blanca,’ said Alfonso to his wife.

As the days passed it was clear that the old Queen grew very thoughtful. She would sit watching the girls, her brows knit, a strange expression on her face, as though she were trying to solve some problem.

It was late one night, after the household had retired, that she went to that chamber shared by her daughter and her husband and told one of the guards in the passage outside that she wished to speak to the King and Queen of Castile. She would go to them; all she needed was for them to be prepared for her coming.

Her daughter was not as astonished as she might have been.

‘My mother has never acted as others did before,’ she explained to Alfonso. ‘Many considered her actions strange. But it must mean that she has something important to say to us, since she comes thus by night.’ She then ordered the servants to light more candles and she and Alfonso, wrapped in night robes, awaited the coming of the Queen.

She came in, as though there were nothing unusual in this nocturnal meeting.

‘I have the solution,’ she said as she seated herself on a stool. ‘It has been puzzling me almost since the day I arrived here, because it was clear to me that the future Queen of France should be Blanca.’

‘But how can that be …’ began Alfonso.

The old Queen held up her hand and said: ‘It can well be. Instead of my taking Urraca to France, I shall take Blanca.’

‘But it is Urraca …’

‘The French King will welcome my granddaughter to France to marry his son. There is no stipulation as to which granddaughter. The girl’s
name
is of no importance … yet in a manner it is of the utmost importance. That is my point. The French will never accept Urraca. What can they call her? With a name like that she is doomed to remain a foreigner all her life. Blanca. That is different. They will call her Blanche and make her one of them – and with her wit and drive she will be a worthy Queen of France. That is what I have come to tell you, my son and daughter. Blanca shall go to France. We must find another suitor for Urraca.’

Alfonso said: ‘My lady, we understand well your thoughts and intentions, but we should need time to think of this matter.’

‘There is not much time,’ retorted the old lady brusquely. ‘But you may have two days in which to decide and I shall now make my preparations to leave with Blanca. I think from now on we should begin to call her Blanche.’

The weeks that followed were quite bewildering to Blanca – or Blanche as she must now think of herself.

She had been summoned to the presence of her parents and grandmother and briefly informed that plans had been changed. She, not Urraca, was to go to France in the care of her grandmother in order that she might marry the son of the King of France.

Poor Urraca had been quite shocked; and, although she had wept at the thought of leaving her home, she now wept because she was going to stay in it a little longer. Blanche understood her feelings and tried to comfort her.

‘My grandmother has done this,’ cried Urraca. ‘She did not like me from the start. You were her favourite.’

Blanche shook her head. ‘How could anyone know to whom such a person would take a fancy? Oh, Urraca, I don’t want to go. I don’t like any of it. It is so … undignified … it makes us so unimportant … don’t you see? Just like counters. You can have one of them … this one or that one … it doesn’t matter which.’

‘If you can change your name, why couldn’t I have changed mine?’

‘Mine is not really a change. It’s just the translation. You can’t translate Urraca.’

‘I wish our grandmother had never come here. I’m not surprised her husband put her into prison.’

‘Poor Urraca,’ said Blanche. ‘Don’t fret so. It may well be the time will come when you will see this as a stroke of great good fortune for yourself.’

Urraca looked solemnly at her sister and then threw herself into her arms. ‘I don’t want anything bad to happen to you, sister.’

‘Perhaps it won’t. In any case I shall do my best to stop it.’

Urraca looked at her sister intently. ‘I think you will,’ she said. ‘I believe I understand now why our grandmother chose you to go to France.’

The old Queen rode much of the time in her litter, for the journey was long and arduous, and even her indomitable will could not command her bones not to ache or the exhaustion not to overcome her. Blanche rode close to the litter on her white palfrey; and there were frequent halts for rests. They stayed at inns and castles and the Queen would lie on her pallet and have her granddaughter sit beside her that they might talk together.

It was an education for Blanche and she was sure she learned more about the world in those weeks of travel than she had done during the whole of her childhood. Queen Eleanor awakened her to a new world, a world of excitement, adventure and danger; far far away was the sunny court of Castile where her fond parents had guarded her and her sisters from the world.

Eleanor talked of her own childhood when she had graced her father’s court with her sister Petronilla. What a court that had been! The prevailing passion had been music and the greatest poets of the day and finest composers and singers had flocked there to delight the company. Eleanor remembered summer evenings in the scented gardens while the strains of music filled the air and all listened entranced to accounts of unrequited or fulfilled love – whichever it was the poet’s fancy to indulge. And at this court Eleanor had reigned supreme. There, she had been the most beautiful of women – that was credible, for in spite of the ravages of the years she retained that exquisite bone structure which even time could not change; and as she talked she glowed with an inner fire so it was not difficult to imagine that her picture of herself was not entirely without foundation.

‘There are women in this world,’ she said, ‘who are meant to rule. You are one, Blanche. I saw it in you from the first day. Urraca! A pleasant creature – she has some beauty, grace, charm … yes. But not the power to rule. How angry I used to be, how frustrated to have been born a woman. When I was young I used to fear my father would remarry. If he had got a son that puling infant would have come before me. Before me! I, who ruled that court. And I did, Blanche, I do assure you. I ruled that court and because I was a woman, if my father had had a son … who would have been years my junior … he would have come before me. He did not. But that made me none the less resentful. Why should a woman be debarred from rule when she has all the qualities to make a ruler?’