The Revolt of the Eaglets (59 page)

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The news reached England. The King is dead. There is a new King. Richard the First.

In her apartments at Westminster they told Princess Alice. She was seized with a fit of trembling and shut herself into her bedchamber.

It was impossible. He was gone. She was alone. What would become of her?

They would marry her to Richard. She could not endure it. She had heard that he was cold, that her brother Philip loved him dearly and he loved Philip.

She was too stunned to weep.

All she could do was whisper to herself: What now? What will become of me?

In Salisbury Queen Eleanor heard the news.

He was dead. That vital man whom once she had loved and later whom she had hated and reviled. She could not believe it. Henry Plantagenet dead.

She heard of his last hours. They had all turned against him. Serve him right. He had tried to disinherit Richard, her Richard, her best-loved son.

There was change in the air. Everything was going to be different now. She touched her face. She was an old woman. Sixty-seven years of age and so many of them spent in captivity. Her two husbands were dead, her lovers were dead, and she lived on.

She would have something to live for; but she always had had. She had always loved life. That was why she was young even at sixty-seven.

But it was a new life which was opening for her. Freedom! And she would be with her beloved son. She and Richard would stand together as she had always longed for them to do.

Soon she would be delivered. He had promised that it should be the first thing he would do.

All day she waited at the turret. Before sundown she saw a party of riders coming towards the castle.

She went down to meet them.

She was right. She knew that she could trust Richard.

Greetings from the King to his revered mother.

She was free.

Bibliography

Appleby, John T.,
Henry II, The Vanquished King
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The National and Domestic History of England
Aytoun, William E.,
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Dark, Sidney,
St Thomas of Canterbury
Demimuid, Monsignor,
Saint Thomas à Becket
D’Auvergne, Edmund B.,
John, King of England
Guizot, M. (translated by Robert Black),
History of France
Holbach, Maude M.,
In the Footsteps of Richard Coeur de Lion
Hope, Mrs,
The Life of St Thomas Becket of Canterbury
Hutton, the Rev. William Holden, (arranged by)
Thomas of Canterbury
Morris, John,
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Norgate, Kate,
England Under the Angevin Kings
and
John Lackland
Pernoud, Regine (translated by Peter Wiles),
Eleanor of Aquitaine
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From Domesday Book to Magna Carta
Rosenberg, Melrieh V.,
Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of the Troubadours and the Courts of Love
Salzman, L. F.,
Henry II
Stenton, F. M.,
The First Century of English Feudalism
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The Dictionary of National Biography
Strickland, Agnes,
The Lives of the Queens of England
Wade, John,
British History
Wilkinson, Clennell,
Coeur de Lion

BOOK: The Revolt of the Eaglets
10.52Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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