The Queen's Pawn (23 page)

My love for him lay in shards around me like broken glass. I could not walk anywhere for fear of cutting myself, not forward, nor back. I thought of my father, and how he had endured such humiliation at Eleanor’s hands when they had been married. All the world knew that she cuckolded him without restraint. And so would Richard do to me.

I had known of such things all my life. To expect fidelity from a man was to expect the sun not to shine. I found that though I had held this truth in my mind, my heart had not known it. It was my heart that bled now, and burned with fire.

I snatched my golden gown from the floor and tore at it. I was weak, and the dress was well made, for I only made a small rent at the hem.

I lifted Marie Helene’s scissors once more and heard her say, “No, my lady!” But she did not move to stop me.

I used those scissors to start a tear, but I did not want to just cut the gown to ribbons with steel. I wanted to rip the dress apart with my own hands, and that’s what I did, each tear feeding the next, until the gown lay in pieces at my feet, on the table, and draped over a chair. When I finally came to myself, I was holding one sleeve, staring at Marie Helene’s beautiful embroidery in my hand.

Tears obscured my vision. I remembered Eleanor’s admonition, to give my tears to no man, but to keep them for myself, for they were my own power, and no other’s. I remembered those words, and I drew my tears back into my heart.

It was Eleanor’s betrayal I thought of finally, as I came back to myself. The sight of my letter in Henry’s hand stayed with me, the proof that Eleanor had used me for her own ends, without hesitation, without remorse. Perhaps she had always done so, and my love for her, and hers for me, had been an illusion. I knew that, in the future, she would use me again. I dried my eyes on the remnant of that golden sleeve before I cast it into the fire.

The charcoal in the brazier flamed high when the silk and cloth of gold touched it. My dress burned well, but gave off noxious fumes. I stood in that black smoke, until each and every piece of that gown was burned to ash.

I turned then to wash my face and hands in my silver bowl. Marie Helene set Bijou down and moved my brazier close to the window, so that the fumes would be carried away by the wind over the river. The wind blew in my favor, and carried that black smoke out of my chamber.

I stripped off my dirty shift, and washed myself as best I could. Marie Helene called for more water, and the castle servants brought it, though the hour was late and they all should have been in bed.

I stepped into that steaming tub, and Marie Helene bathed me without a word. She sang a sweet song, low under her breath. The sound of those words soothed me as nothing else could, as did the touch of her hands on my hair.

She had the smoking brazier taken away, and a new, finer one brought, one that did not give off noxious odors. She led me gently to sit beside the fire; she dried my hair so that it curled to my waist once more in waves of brown and gold and maple, hair like my mother‘s, the woman I had never seen. I longed for my mother, my real mother, for the first time since I met Eleanor.

Marie Helene stroked my hair, and it seemed to me that I felt my mother’s touch behind her hand. Then Bijou, who had been frightened by my fury, came out from beneath the table and lay down on my foot. I picked her up and kissed her, and held her for the rest of the night.

I did not stay awake, as I had the night before. I said my prayers, asking for a blessing on my father, on my brother, and on the kingdom of France. Then I slept, with Marie Helene beside me.

Before I slept, I remembered the king’s words to me, down by the waterside. I still had the wreath he had made me. He had crowned me with those flowers; he had told me that one day he would place another crown on my head.

I knew well that the king had spoken in the heat of the moment, when lust no doubt had overwhelmed his reason, or perhaps when his mood had been softened by our time together on the grass of the riverbank. Henry no doubt had forgotten his words almost as soon as he spoke them. But I remembered.

Tomorrow, I would see the king.

 

In the morning, I stayed in my rooms and Eleanor did not send for me. I took a little bread and cheese at noon, and then called for Marie Helene to dress me.

I was calm by this time, for I knew my purpose. I would step out on my own. I would leave Eleanor and Richard behind, and see what I might make of my life for myself. I had the clarity of thought that comes after great anger, when a woman knows she has nothing left to lose, and everything to play for.

My love for Richard still lay in shards at my feet. I would love him all my life, but it was a love fraught with lies, a love I could not live with.

I would not think of Eleanor. When she came into my mind, all I could see was her elegant, tapered fingers holding my father’s letter, handing it in one graceful motion to the king. I knew her reasons for betraying me: she had handed over my letter to save Richard, as she would have betrayed anyone else to protect the son she loved. Her love for me had not stayed her hand; she had never loved me, if she could use me as just one more pawn on her chessboard.

As I dressed, I thought of Henry I set aside all ideas of sin and loss, and thought of his gray eyes, of his wide peasant hands, and of how his hands felt on my waist, lifting me down from my horse.

I perfumed my body and my hair with the rose water Eleanor had given me, and donned my red silk gown. I paid close attention to my shift as well, and chose one embroidered by Marie Helene with red flowers at the hem and along the collar. I did not draw the string at the throat closed tight, but left the shift to drape over my shoulders. I knew that with one tug, it could easily be drawn off.

I wore my red silk gown, for it was the first dress Henry had seen me wear in his hall the night he fed me from his own trencher, the night he offered me venison from his own knife. I laid a light veil across my hair that covered my curls but did not hide them. Over that veil I wore the filet Eleanor had given me, the fleurs-de-Iys of my father’s crest riding like a crown over my brow.

I looked into my bronze mirror, and I did not recognize the woman reflected there. My face was the same except for my eyes.

“My lady” Marie Helene said. “You must consider”

“I have already considered.”

“Your Highness, you must think of the queen.”

“I do think on her, Marie Helene. I go to the king. Every step I take toward his chamber, I will think of her, and of her son.”

Marie Helene did not speak again. As I watched, two tears formed in the shadows of her eyes. They fell in silence, marring her cheeks.

“Do not weep for them,” I said.

“My lady, I weep for you.”

I laid my mirror down, that I might not see my own bitterness. “Marie Helene, there is no need.”

I left then and walked alone to the king’s chambers, though Marie Helene asked to go in my stead. She hoped to call on him, so that Henry might turn her, and thus myself, away. I knew better than to send another to do my bidding. I was nothing, and no one. I had not even Eleanor’s love and protection; to her, I was just one more thing to be used and discarded. Whatever I was, and whatever I would be, I would have to make of myself.

The king was not alone, as kings never are. I stood outside the door to his antechamber, dressed in my red silk gown. The men-at-arms who kept the gate stared at me as if I were an apparition. I simply smiled at them, and asked to see the king.

They did not know what to do, so they sent a page inside with my request. I had chosen my time well, and carefully, for the daily business of the kingdom was winding down. In an hour, the king would go to the main hall, to greet his people and break his afternoon fast. There would be dancing and singing in the hall, as there was every night. Women would smile at him, offering him their charms, were he to choose to taste them.

If I had my way, Henry would not be there that night.

I did not wait long. Henry’s chamberlain called me in almost at once, bowing to me, for he knew who my father was.

I saw Henry standing beside his worktable, which was piled high with scrolls of vellum. Lamps burned and smoked, for in the depths of Windsor Castle it was already night.

“So, Alais. You come for me.”

I met his gray eyes without flinching. His face reflected none of his usual easy familiarity with me. I saw his anger, thinly veiled. He had not forgotten my letter to my father.

For a moment, I feared that the connection between us had broken, burned away in the fire of his lust for his whore or in the fire of his rage, as my letter to my father had burned to ash. But as I saw the flicker of anger take light behind his eyes, I knew that we were not done with one another, not yet. All was not lost. I still might play, and win.

I stepped into the room, and Henry’s ministers made way for me. He watched me, standing by his table, a roll of vellum in his hand. His eyes did not leave me, though he feigned indifference before the men standing there. I felt the heat of his gaze first on my face, then on my breasts and hair. I had him, and I knew it. It was for me to play it out. I raised my first pawn, and knelt before him.

There was a deep silence then, as all his men stared at me. I felt that each man wished he were alone with me. Each wished that he might draw that veil from my hair, and cast my filet aside, the gold of my father’s fleurs-de-Iys tossed to the floor, my silk skirts raised above my waist.

I knew little of the act of love, but the night before, I had made Marie Helene describe it to me. At first she feigned ignorance, then modesty, but when I told her what I would do, she dropped all pretense and explained what would happen, and how it would hurt, and why a woman, once lost, was lost forever. I did not care. I did not mean to lose myself to Henry, as I had to Richard and Eleanor; I meant to find the road to my future in him.

The silence stretched on, and I neither moved nor spoke. Henry finally raised one hand. “Leave us.”

Whatever business they had been about, whatever moment I had interrupted, was over. Henry’s ministers filed out, one behind the other, each seeking the sight of me once more before the chamberlain closed the door behind them.

“What do you want, Alais?”

Henry came no closer, but his eyes were on mine, and the softness of my hair where it lay against the curve of my breast. I stared back at him. I did not lower my eyes. Henry liked boldness in women, and I was bold enough for anything that day. I would get what I had come for.

“I come to beg your forgiveness, my lord king.”

Henry snorted, throwing the vellum scroll he held onto the pile on the table. He paced away from me, and moved to pour himself a cup of mead. I felt his eyes on me, even then, and the connection between us was as strong as it had ever been, even when he held me in his arms down by the riverside. I could feel the heat rising from his body, and we were more than ten feet apart.

As I knew he would, he circled back to me, until he was standing only a few feet away, his cup in his hand.

“Alais, what are you playing at? Has Eleanor sent you?”

I laughed, the music of my laughter rising to fill those gray walls. I did not hold it back, but let it surround Henry, and draw him closer to me, though he did not move.

“I am here at no one’s bidding, Your Majesty I come for love of you.”

Henry scoffed again, but I had caught his attention. He did not even look at his cup as he set it down once more with not a sip drunk from it. He stared at me, his gray eyes boring into mine, seeking me out, searching for a lie. I stared back at him. I had no more lies to tell.

“I thought love had to be earned, Princess.”

“It does. It has been. You have won mine.”

“By not throwing you out on your ear? For not locking you away for high treason?”

“No, my lord. For seeing me alone when I have done you wrong. For letting me ask forgiveness, when I have thrown away the right to it.”

“No one has the right to forgiveness, Alais.”

Henry stared at me, and I did not take my eyes from his. I watched the wheels of his mind turning, and saw that he still was not ready to give in to me, not yet. We both knew why I had come. He simply did not believe it. I would have to show him.

“If it is forgiveness you want, you have it.” He waved one hand, as if to dismiss me, as if to dismiss the heat that even then rose between us, like a tide that would not go out. “But most penitents do not seek forgiveness dressed from head to toe in red, Alais.”

I rose to my feet in one graceful motion. I had been taught to rise smoothly as well as kneel gracefully when I was a child. I stepped toward him, my senses on fire, the scent of him reaching out to me, drawing me close. Henry was a man, and did not back away from me, but his eyes widened. He would have expected this from any other woman, but never from me.

“It is your favorite gown, is it not, Your Majesty?”

He did not answer me, but his face hardened. I saw that he would resist me, and I smiled. He was resisting himself, and for nothing.

I raised my lips to his, but did not kiss him. I took in the scent of sandalwood from his skin, and woodsmoke from the braziers that burned nearby I breathed him in, as if I would devour him. I let him see that I favored him in truth, and not only because he was king.

“I wear this gown to please you, Majesty Tell me, then. Does it please you?”

Henry gripped my arms and held me still. I could not tell whether he meant to hold me back or keep me near. I saw in his eyes that he was at war with himself, but I knew he need not fight a losing battle. I had chosen him already

“You know it does.”

Henry bent close to me, his lips over mine, his breath hot against my skin. But then he slipped the leash, and let me go. Before I could take my next breath, he was walking away from me, passing through the inner door to his bedroom beyond. He stopped in the door, and spoke to me over one shoulder.