A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver

A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver

For Manci and for David, who taught me freedom from its two directions.

Atheneum Books for Young Readers
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright © 1973 by E.L. Konigsburg
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Designed by Nancy Gruber
Printed and bound in the United States of America

13 15 17 19 20 18 16 14

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 73-6320
ISBN 0-689-30111-1

ISBN-13: 978-0-68930-111-7
eISBN-13: 978-1-43913-215-9

Inside Heaven

PART I
Abbot Suger’s Tale

Back in Heaven

PART II
Matilda-Empress’s Tale

Back in Heaven

PART III
William the Marshal’s Tale

Back in Heaven

PART IV
Eleanor of Aquitaine’s Own Tale

Back in Heaven

DURING HER LIFETIME
Eleanor of Aquitaine had not been a patient woman. While she had lived, she had learned to bide her time, but biding one’s time is a very different thing from patience. After she had died, and before she had arrived in Heaven, it had been necessary for Eleanor to learn some patience. Heaven wouldn’t allow her Up until she had. But there were times, like today, when she wasn’t sure whether she had really learned any patience at all or whether she had simply become too tired to be quarrelsome.

Today she was restless. She paced back and forth so rapidly that the swish of her robes ruffled the treetops below. For today was the day when her husband, King Henry II of England, was to be judged. Today she would at last know whether or not—after centuries of waiting—he would join her in Heaven.

Henry had died even before she had. He had died in the year 1189, in July of that year, and Eleanor had spent fifteen years on Earth beyond that. But Eleanor’s life had not been perfect; she had done things on Earth for which there had been some Hell to pay, so she had not arrived in Heaven immediately. Finally, the world’s poets had pleaded and won her case. Eleanor had been a friend of music and poetry while she had lived, and musicians, artists and poets play an important role in the admissions policies of Heaven; with their pull Eleanor had moved Up. Even so, she had not arrived in Heaven until two centuries after she had died and long after her first husband and some of her best friends had made it. Now it was late in the twentieth century, and Henry still had not moved Up.

Eleanor began drumming her fingers on a nearby cloud.

“You keep that up, and you’ll have the Angels to answer to for it,” said a voice, one cloud removed.

“Oh, Mother Matilda, I swear you could nag a person to a second death.”

A man sitting beside Mother Matilda pleaded, “Your mother-in-law is only reminding you that we have all been requested to stop drumming our fingers and to stop racing back and forth. The Angels don’t appreciate having to answer hundreds of requests for better television reception.”

“I know, William, I know,” Eleanor answered.

“After all,” Mother Matilda added, “we are every bit as anxious as you are to know the outcome of today’s Judgment.”

“You ought to be patient, my lady,” William said.

“Yes,” Eleanor answered. “I know. I know what I ought to be. I have always known what I ought to be.”

But the truth was that Eleanor actually enjoyed not being patient. When she felt impatient, she felt something close to being alive again. Even after more than five hundred years in Heaven, Eleanor of Aquitaine still missed quarreling and dressing up. Eleanor missed strong, sweet smells. Eleanor missed feeling hot and being cold. Eleanor missed Henry. She missed life.

She sighed. She wanted to be there the minute Henry arrived—if he would; there was a great deal to tell him. It had taken Eleanor almost five hundred years to catch up on the two hundred she had missed. She often thought that the worst thing about time spent in Hell is that a person has no way of knowing what is happening on Earth. In Heaven at least, one could watch, even if one could not participate. Only Saints and Angels were allowed to interfere in Earthly affairs. Everyone in Heaven had periods of Earth time about which they knew nothing. Everyone except the Saints; they always came Up immediately following death, and, of course, Heaven had always been home to the Angels. But Saints were hardly the people to contact when you wanted to catch up on the news. Most of them had been more concerned with Heaven than with Earth even during their lifetimes, and now it was almost impossible to move them even a whisper away from the Angels.

Eleanor turned around looking toward the night side of Earth. Perhaps she could spot an outdoor movie screen. Watching that would help her pass some minutes. As she turned her face toward night, and her back toward the two people waiting with her, she spotted Abbot Suger. Eleanor called to him, and the good Abbot stopped to rest at her side.

“Haven’t seen you for a long time, Abbot,” she said.

“Oh,” he answered, “I was over at admissions. They just let an English teacher Up, and he made a beeline for Shakespeare.”

“They all do.”

“Yes, I know,” the Abbot chuckled, “but I like to watch.”

“What did this one want to discuss?”

Abbot Suger laughed out loud. “This one didn’t want to discuss anything. He presented Mr. Shakespeare with a list of errors he had made in geography and history.”

“I wonder how he smuggled his list past the Judges. No one is supposed to carry a single grudge into Heaven, let alone a list of them.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” the Abbot said. “I sometimes suspect that the Judges close an eye. It’s always fun to see an English teacher’s first encounter with Shakespeare. I think that the Judges, serious as they are, enjoy it, too.”

Eleanor said, half to herself, “Shakespeare wrote a play about my son King John that wasn’t too accurate either. He gave me a small part in it, but he certainly didn’t give me any good lines.”

“Ah, Eleanor,” Abbot Suger replied, “Shakespeare was far better at writing of heroes than of heroines.”

“Maybe so,” she said, “but then I wonder why he wrote nothing of Henry.”

“Oh! my goodness,” Suger said, “he wrote of Henry. Plenty of Henrys. He wrote
Henry IV, Henry V, Parts I
and II,
Henry VI, Part I
and
Henry VI, Part II.”

“But not my Henry!” Eleanor shouted.

“Eleanor! Eleanor!” Abbott Suger said, “Calm down.”

“You never knew my Henry,” Eleanor said. “You only knew Louis, my first husband.”

“And my foremost pupil,” the Abbot added.

“Shakespeare should have written of my Henry.” Eleanor poked at the cloud absentmindedly. She continued staring at the cloud and said in a low voice, “Henry is being judged today. That’s why I’m so excitable. And that’s why they’re here,” she added, flinging a look over her shoulder. “The lady is Henry’s mother, Matilda-Empress, and the man is William the Marshal, a true and loyal knight.”

Abbot Suger glanced in the direction that Eleanor indicated and nodded and smiled at the man and the woman. They nodded back. The Abbot then leaned closer to Eleanor and asked, “Who is pleading Henry’s case?”

“Lawyers,” Eleanor answered. “I always knew that if we ever got enough lawyers into Heaven, they would plead for him.”

“Why would lawyers plead for a king? Kings have long been out of fashion with the law.”

“My Henry laid the foundation of the whole court system of England,” Eleanor announced proudly.

“Really?”

“Henry was due Up long before this, but it had taken almost eight hundred years to get enough lawyers Up to make a case.”

“Yes,” Abbot Suger agreed, “in Heaven lawyers are as hard to find as bank presidents.” Abbot Suger nodded his head, trying to remember something back in the centuries. “Eleanor,” he said hesitatingly, “was it not Henry who made you a prisoner?”

“It certainly was,” Eleanor agreed. “Henry kept me locked up for fifteen years.”

“And you still want him with you in Heaven?”

“Oh, goodness! yes. I think Heaven is much what he deserves. I want him to be every bit as bored as I am …” She laughed, looking quickly over at Suger to see if what she had said had made him angry. After all, Abbot Suger was a priest, and priests have always held Heaven in very high regard. But Abbot Suger was not angry; he had a good sense of humor. He had always been a favorite of Eleanor’s.

Abbot Suger asked, “Why did you divorce Louis? I was Below when you did; I missed it.”

“I knew you would not go straight to Heaven. I knew that you were too much in love with the world for an abbot.”

“Actually, Eleanor, I have no complaints. Any man with responsibilities in government is bound for Hell, at least for a little while. But I spent less than a century Below. I arrived Up shortly before you died. I looked down on you on your deathbed. You seemed to have died in peace.”

“How did you know that Henry had made me a prisoner?”

“Oh, the usual deathbed gossip—accounting good deeds and bad.”

“Was my divorce from Louis listed in the good column or the bad?”

“The bad. Why did you divorce him?”

Eleanor tilted her head and smiled. “Because you weren’t there any longer to hold us together, I guess. You died, remember?”

“Of course I remember dying. I remember every thing. I remember our first meeting in Bordeaux when you were to wed the young Louis, the boy whom I had taught to love God.”

“How did Eleanor appear to you when you first saw her?” Matilda-Empress asked, moving forward.

“That is hard to say,” Abbot Suger answered.

“Why?”

“Because my first look at her was colored by her reputation. And her wealth.”