ASilverMirror (21 page)

Anxiety and anger wiped out the little flicker of resentment
she had felt. Of course he had forgotten her! As a small diversion while they
waited, Barbara repeated to her father Alphonse’s message—that the French
emissaries and Henry de Montfort had detained him and that hethought
she should ask her father for a man to run her errands and serve as
escort—whereupon her father cocked an inquiring brow at her.

“So Alphonse expects to be kept on a short leash,” he said,
adding absently, “I can spare you five men if you want—”

“No,” Barbara said, “two will do. If they are here, I would
like Bevis and Lewin.”

Norfolk nodded at his younger squire, who ran off to tell
the men-at-arms, and asked, “What is Alphonse up to?”

“I have not the vaguest notion,” Barbara admitted, “but I do
not think any of this is his idea. Both the French emissaries and Henry de
Montfort sent for him. He did not apply to them for audience. It may not mean
anything, father. He and Henry de Montfort and Prince Edward have been friends
for years. They hunted and fought in tourneys together. And Alphonse is Queen
Marguerite’s nephew and well known in the French court. It is not surprising
that the emissaries should ask him for news—”

“Before he had broken his fast?”

Norfolk stared hard at his daughter, and a sharp pang of
guilt racked Barbara because she found herself unwilling to tell him about
Alphonse’s agreement with the French king. In the next moment she realized that
her father was staring through her rather than at her, and after another moment
he nodded. Before he could speak, however, a royal page was bowing gracefully
and inviting them to follow him.

The king was in the castle garden, to which Barbara and her
father were admitted by two fully armed guards. One looked at the broadsword at
Norfolk’s hip, but he did not speak, and the breath that had caught in
Barbara’s throat eased out. There were other men-at-arms, she saw, standing
quietly around the walls. The king, she thought, was little less a prisoner
than Edward. She saw him then, seated on a bench in the shade of a small fruit
tree, with Peter de Montfort to one side and Henry de Bohun just turning toward
her. Seven ladies were also in attendance, one seated on another bench placed
at an angle to the king’s and six sitting on robes laid on the grass.

Barbara hardly noticed the ladies because she was so stunned
by King Henry’s expression. The evidence of confinement combined with the
effect of her visit to the prince the previous day had led her to expect
helpless rage, impotent frustration, or the kind of dead despair that Edward
had shown. Henry, however, gave her a sunny smile and extended his hand
eagerly. As she sank to the ground and kissed the king’s fingers, Barbara
almost laughed at herself. She had expected to see in King Henry what she
herself would have felt, what she knew her father or Alphonse would have felt,
what she imagined any man would feel in similar circumstances. What she
actually saw was typical of King Henry, whose incurable optimism, when he was
not wallowing in self-pity and hysteria, had brought about the terrible
situation in England.

“How is it with my beloved Eleanor?” Henry asked as soon as
Barbara raised her head.

“Very well, my lord, except that she frets over your
well-being,” Barbara replied. “She is treated with the greatest honor and
courtesy by King Louis and with most loving affection by Queen Marguerite.’’

That was no lie. No matter how annoyed Louis was with his
sister-by-marriage, his rigid sense of what was owing to his own
noblesse
oblige
and to her position as a foreign queen provided her with honor and
courtesy. And Queen Eleanor in need and sorrow was far dearer to her sister
Marguerite than when she had been happy. Now Marguerite could feel superior
instead of resenting Eleanor’s power over her husband, a power Marguerite had
never had.

A gleam woke in the king’s right eye—the left was half
hidden, like Edward’s, by a weak lid—and for a moment Barbara was afraid Henry
would ask her whether the honor and courtesy of King Louis would be translated
into help for him, but he did not. Instead he called for another rug to be
spread on the grass and invited her to sit. Then he questioned her on every
detail of the queen’s health and appearance.

When she had at last satisfied him, he nodded to her and
suggested she might like to join the other ladies. Barbara rose at once and
gathered up the rug, about to refuse the invitation because none had been
offered to her father, who was standing beside her, but before she could speak,
the king said, “Wait,” smiled a little, flicked a sly glance at Peter de
Montfort, and added, “I thought you had gone to France to take up your place in
Eleanor’s household. Why do you come back so soon?”

“To obtain my father’s blessing on my betrothal,” Barbara
replied smoothly, with a cold smile.

The revelation called forth some feminine sounds, a gasp, a
soft exclamation, and from her right a sniff, but Barbara was too intent on
King Henry’s expression to do more than mentally record what she heard. She was
glad to see the sly look on Henry’s face change to open surprise, a
confirmation of her guess that the king had made the remark about her early
return to taunt his gaolers. Henry believed she had been sent as a spy by
Leicester to ferret out the queen’s secrets and that she had come back because
Eleanor was too clever for her.

“How came you to be betrothed in France?” The king’s
surprise had changed to indignation. His smile was gone when he spoke.

“My lands, sire, a small manor called Cruas with its farms,
are beholden to King Louis. I have always been in his gift, but he was kind
enough to allow me to come back to England with my father after my husband, Comte
de le Pontet de Thouzan le Thor, died.”

“Oh,” Henry said, smiling again and interested now that she
had made clear that his right over her marriage had not been usurped. “I did
not know that. I thought your dower would be from your father.”

“No, Cruas was my mother’s, but it was through my father’s
care that the lands came to me.” Barbara was not about to let pass the
implication that her father was not willing to provide for her.

“And she will have something handsome from me,” Norfolk put
in, his hand on her shoulder. “Not lands. I am not one to break up an estate.
The lands will go to my brother Hugh’s boy, my nephew Roger.”

“Then I take it you are pleased with the man King Louis
chose for Lady Barbara?” Henry sounded both sulky and uncertain.

“How could I object to Sieur Alphonse d’Aix, nephew to our
queen and also to Queen Marguerite?” Norfolk laughed at the open astonishment
in Henry’s face. “I was as surprised as you, sire,” he admitted.

Henry smiled back, flattered because Norfolk seemed to
relish Alphonse’s relationship with Queen Eleanor. He spoke of Alphonse, whom
he had met during his visits to the French court, and Norfolk replied, also
with praise, mentioning that it was Alphonse who had arranged that Barbara have
Cruas. Immediately interested, as he always was in personal events, Henry asked
for details, seeming to have forgotten the spite that had earlier made him
ignore Norfolk’s presence. He gestured for Barbara’s father to sit down on the
bench to his left and listened, smiling and nodding.

Silently blessing Alphonse for providing at least the
possibility of easing the king’s resentment of her father, Barbara tactfully
backed away. She had almost passed the half-circle of seated women when a tug
at her skirt made her look down and smile with pleasure.

“My Lord, what a shock you have given me,” Aliva le
Despenser whispered. “Sit down at once and tell all. I thought you would be
weeping and pleading with the king to find a way to free you, not smiling all
over your face when you said you had been betrothed.”

After a single glance that assured her that the conversation
between her father and the king was progressing along pleasant lines and she
would not need to step forward again to change the subject, Barbara spread her
rug beside Aliva’s. Before she sat down, however, she leaned over to kiss the
cheek of Alyce de Vere and reached beyond her to press the hand of Margaret
Basset. Alyce, who was only sixteen, smiled at her shyly. Margaret, who was
double that, lifted a brow.

“I thought you too clever to be caught,” Margaret Basset
said.

“Oh, did you not hear what Papa said?” Barbara replied
gaily. “How could I stand against King Louis’s will?”

“Barby,” Aliva said warningly, “I will catch you in a dark
corner and strangle you. You would stand up to God if you opposed His will. Why
did you agree to this betrothal?”

In private, Barbara might have confessed the truth to Aliva,
but Alyce was too young and Margaret too sharp-tongued for her to admit she
loved Alphonse. Aliva’s sympathy she might endure if Alphonse proved
unfaithful, but Margaret’s and Alyce’s she did not want. She shrugged.

“It seemed a good thing. Sieur Alphonse has a special
relationship to Queen Marguerite, which always provides consideration at court.
I am no longer so young—neither is my papa. I must think of the future. The
proposal came from Alphonse, so I know I was not forced on him. Since we have
known each other for a very long time and I am not rich enough for him to take
out of greed, it must be me he desires. He is very clever and was lying in wait
to snare me. If I must marry, he seemed best. He is a most elegant gentleman
and will always be kind.” She smiled and lowered her voice. “Certainly he is a
safe haven compared with Guy de Montfort. I am getting too old to keep running
away. Suddenly it was too much trouble to run very fast, especially when I had
so good a reason to be slow. Wait until you see Alphonse.”

As she spoke, Barbara had taken in the faces of all the
women. Peter de Montfort’s wife, Alice, was seated on the bench to the king’s
right, her husband was now sitting beside her and watching with no expression
at all while Barbara’s father talked to the king. Sitting on a robe on the
grass beside Lady Alice was Eleanor de Bohun, Humphrey de Bohun’s wife, her
thin face sour with dissatisfaction. Eleanor was envious, Barbara thought,
because Lady Alice had a bench—despite the fact that Lady Alice’s age would
have made sitting on the ground difficult. Next were two women she did not
know, sitting close together and talking in low voices.

In answer to Barbara’s whispered question, Aliva said the
two women were the sisters of Robert de Ferrars, Earl of Derby, who had fought
at Lewes for Leicester. Whether Ferrars actually supported Leicester was
another question. To Barbara the Earl of Derby seemed more like a wild beast,
attacking anyone who tried to restrain him, rather than a man of principle who
believed in Leicester’s cause.

Just then a page in Henry de Montfort’s colors came into the
garden and spoke to Peter de Montfort, who gestured him toward the king.
Although she perked up her ears, Barbara could not hear what he said, but the
king nodded and rose, gesturing for the ladies to remain seated. Barbara was
pleased when he beckoned to her father as well as Peter de Montfort and
Humphrey de Bohun to accompany him.

“D’Aix,” Eleanor de Bohun said thoughtfully. “That is a
bastard line, is it not?”

Barbara smiled very sweetly. “Yes, but it is noble on both
sides. Alphonse is very proud of his heritage. His shield carries the bar
sinister across the Berenger colors—by choice. He could have chosen a different
device after his father died. It is a powerful family, very powerful. His
brother is vassal to King Louis, and held in very high esteem.”

Alice de Montfort sniffed. “I suppose you are to be married
in Aix?”

“Oh, no,” Barbara said. “Papa would never hear of my going
so far without the bond of blood being sealed by the Church. And he wishes to
give me to my husband in person. I am to be married the day after tomorrow in
Canterbury Cathedral. The Bishops of Chichester and London will both take part
in the service.”

“The day after tomorrow!” Aliva shrieked.

“Are you with child already?” Eleanor de Bohun asked.

Barbara had turned toward Aliva, laughing. Her head whipped
back toward Eleanor, and for a moment she stared, her eyes a cold sleet gray
under her heavy brows. Then a corner of her wide mouth lifted with disdain and
her nostrils flared and contracted, seeming to reject a nasty stink.

“I had no need to yield anything to make this marriage,” she
said. “I am a maiden still, I assure you. You are invited, Lady Eleanor, to see
the bloodstains on my sheets in the morning.”

“Never mind such stupidities,” Margaret Basset put in
sharply. “Since you have been married already, whether you have a maidenhead is
your husband’s affair and of very little interest to anyone else. What is
important is who is to attend you? Who will make the feast? Who is invited?”

Barbara had to admit with a laugh that everything had
happened so fast she had not yet had a chance to speak to her father about what
arrangements he had made—if any. This set Aliva to giggling that Barbara meant
she had not yet had a chance to tell him what she wanted. Margaret raised her
brows at Aliva and said her levity would get her or someone else in trouble
someday. To Barbara’s surprise Aliva’s beautiful brown eyes filled with tears
and she looked guiltily down at her hands.

Barbara thought she was the only one who noticed, because
Margaret’s voice had continued smoothly, now asking Alice de Montfort whether
the wedding might be of use in dealing with the French emissaries. Alice grew
immediately thoughtful, clearly considering whether, since King Louis had
arranged the marriage to his wife’s nephew, a grand celebration might not
indirectly honor the French king and flatter his emissaries.

“I will certainly mention the possibility to Peter,” she
said, “and before dinner, so that he can announce at that time the hour of the
wedding mass and the invitations to the feast if he thinks the notion good.”
She nodded at Margaret Basset with approval, then turned to Barbara and asked,
“And you will make no trouble, whatever is decided, Lady Barbara?”