ASilverMirror (7 page)

As a small compensation to John, she walked with him toward
the stair, holding him back a little as the clerk went up. “Do not say anything
about how long you have been in Boulogne,” she whispered. “Be sure to bring
attention to your muddy condition to show the haste with which you were sent to
bring her news. She does not like to be the last to be informed.” And before
she could stop herself, she added, “And when she asks why Alphonse did not come
with you, tell her he was nearly fainting with exhaustion and did not wish to
affright his aunt with his weakness.”

John could not repress a chuckle. “He will kill me.”

But before Barbara could reply, Alphonse himself came into
the room, newly dressed in a sky blue tunic over which he wore a loose
rose-colored surcoat, its huge armholes, which stretched from shoulder to hip,
bordered with intricately gold-embroidered strips of ribbon. A little round cap
of matching rose, similarly embroidered, perched on his luxuriant black curls,
just a bit askew. Barbara choked between laughter and tears. It was remarkable
how that tiny tilt to his cap gave Alphonse’s elegant appearance an air of
breathless hurry.

He looked toward them at the sound, and Barbara was
momentarily lifted on a surge of hope. There were other people in the hall,
none of them deliberately silent. Why should he be able to pick out her laugh?
But she shut out the thought without completing it, and Alphonse’s expression
was hidden by the glare of the light behind him. There was nothing to be read
in it, however, even after he hurried across the room to them and Barbara could
see him clearly.

“Go up to the queen,” he said to John. “Do not say I am
here. I will follow you in a few minutes. Quick, before the clerk comes back to
see what is delaying you.” Assured of support from someone who knew Eleanor
well, John hurried up the stairs and Alphonse turned to Barbara. “In the name
of God,” he said, “why are you here in France?”

There was such urgency to the question, which as far as
Barbara could see was totally unimportant, that she hesitated, seeking a hidden
meaning. Alphonse glanced up the stair and back at her impatiently. Finally,
still without understanding why her presence in France was important, she said,
“My father sent me to prevent my uncle from throwing away his lands, and
perhaps his life, in a wild attempt to protect his wife.”

“I thought you said you brought Leicester’s latest peace
terms.”

That was the last thing Barbara wanted to hear. It brushed
away the thin spiderweb of hope she had been weaving again. Apparently he had
misunderstood what she said earlier and had seen some political purpose in her
coming to France.

“No. Oh no,” she said. “I only came with William Charles,
the king’s knight. The Earl of Leicester would not think of entrusting such a
mission to me.”

“Then you will be returning to England as soon as you can, I
suppose,” he said. “You will want to rejoin—”

“Sieur Alphonse!” The clerk’s voice, high with surprise, cut
off what Alphonse was about to say. “Oh,” he went on, turning to go into the
queen’s apartment again, “my lady will be overjoyed to see you.”

“
Merde!
” Alphonse muttered, his full lips suddenly
thin with fury, but he was far too well trained in diplomacy and far too aware
of Queen Eleanor’s delicately balanced temper to delay even a moment. He pushed
past Barbara and pounded up the stairs.

She stood staring after him until he disappeared through the
doorway of the queen’s chamber. Some emotion had flickered briefly in Alphonse
before he mentioned his expectation that she would soon go back to England. It
was gone too fast for her to tell whether it was sadness or gladness, but if
her purpose for being in France was not political, why should Alphonse care
whether she left or stayed? Surely he could not fear that she would throw
herself at him again like a foolish child? Nonsense. They had been together at
court for years after that and she had never been more than properly polite.

And why had he been so angry when the clerk interrupted
their conversation? “You will want to rejoin—” he had said. Want to rejoin
whom? Her father? She loved Papa dearly, of course, but to feel any urgency to
rejoin him was ridiculous. She had gone home with him after he came to
negotiate the peace treaty with France in 1257 only to avoid all the ghouls who
wanted to gobble up the estate that became hers when Thouzan le Thor died. Any
one of them was willing to swallow her with the lands, like a bitter pill
wrapped in the sweetmeat of her manor and farms. Alphonse knew that. She
herself had told him of her disgust, and it was Alphonse who had suggested to
her the device that prevented King Louis from choosing a “good man” to be her
second husband.

A smile curved Barbara’s lips for an instant. Only King
Louis would have taken seriously her plea that he not give her in marriage
because, though she did not yet feel a call to the cloister, she did not wish
to close that door to salvation either, and wished to remain celibate until she
was sure. But Alphonse had told her to say that, so he knew she felt no desire
to be a nun. And then he had been called home to Aix and had not returned to
court until after her father arrived in France and agreed to take her home. He
acted when he first returned from Aix as if he found her desirable, but then,
when he heard she was going to England, he had suddenly gone away again to
fight in a series of tourneys.

Barbara went slowly outside and stood at the foot of the
stair for a moment while duty to Princess Eleanor pulled one way and desire
pulled another. She glanced over her shoulder at the open doors of the church
and then blushed. In a time of so many great troubles, would it not be a sin to
pray for a solution to her very small problem? Surely God and His saints should
not be badgered about one girl’s stupid inability to master her own heart. So
she started toward the smaller house that had been assigned to Eleanor of
Castile, but her need to be away from everyone made the idea of idle conversation
horrible, and she set out instead for the kitchen shed to get some apples.

The poor things were very brown and wrinkled, but Frivole
would not mind. Feeling better already, Barbara made her way to the stable. She
peeped in, but only the huge bulk of battle destriers showed in the dim light,
and she did not enter. Around to the back there was an area between the
building and the outer wall closed off by a gate where the lesser beasts, the
palfreys and roncins and light mares, were kept. Barbara’s fluting whistle drew
the attention of all the horses, and several began to move toward the gate. Two
were roughly shouldered aside, another nipped sharply as Frivole took
precedence.

“Tchk,” Barbara said, as she held out one apple on her open
palm. “You are supposed to be gay and flighty, not a shrew.”

Frivole snorted so emphatically that the apple was nearly
blown away, and Barbara laughed. She knew quite well that the snort was not a
response to her words, but it seemed so like an arrogant reply that her spirit
lightened. She went on talking to the mare, who nodded her head, often at
comically appropriate moments. Within a few minutes a groom came out of the
stable and asked how he could serve her. He looked at her strangely when she
bade him go away and said she had just come to visit her mare. Men often came
to examine their destriers, which were very valuable animals, but few women
rode other than pillion, and even those who could ride usually did not know one
animal from another. But it was clear from the way the mare pushed her head
into the lady’s breast that she was accustomed to fondling by this woman, so he
shrugged and went away.

Barbara gave Frivole a second apple, rubbing her nose and
stroking her neck. Eventually she laid her cheek against Frivole’s head,
circled the mare’s neck with her arm, and sighed. If she had married and had a
household of her own, she could have had a more convenient pet, a dog or cat.
But at court such an animal caused endless trouble, and to leave it behind to
the uncertain care of people like her father’s kennelman—a good man but totally
contemptuous of a dog that had no purpose but to love a mistress—was
impossible. The poor creature, loved and petted while with her, lonely and even
mistreated by being forgotten when she was away, would go mad.

The stable cast a shade across the yard behind it. It was
cool, Frivole was plainly enjoying being petted, and Barbara lingered, leaning
against the fence and thinking about a more settled life. But though she
complained often about the inconveniences of court service and might have
preferred a more gentle and considerate mistress, like Princess Eleanor,
Barbara had to admit to herself that she enjoyed the excitement of life at
court. She did not think she would care to exchange her life for Joanna’s,
living retired and busying herself with babes, a dairy, a stillroom, weaving,
and embroidering—in short, a woman’s life. As a retreat from too much intrigue,
Kirby Moorside was a desired haven. As a full-time residence, she would soon regard
it as hell.

“I knew I would find you here.”

Barbara was so startled that she tried to right herself and
turn around at the same time. The combination of her sudden movement and
Alphonse’s voice, which was tight with tension, made Frivole throw up her head.
Barbara’s hand slipped from the mare’s nose so that she banged her elbow on the
top rail of the gate, while the twist of her head to look at Alphonse brought
her headdress right under Frivole’s mouth. Never loath to try what was offered,
Frivole seized Barbara’s fillet and pulled. Both fillet and the net that held
her hair promptly came off as Frivole backed away, and Barbara’s chestnut mane
tumbled down her back and around her face.

“
Peste!
” Barbara cried, leaping up and grabbing for
Frivole’s prize.

Unfortunately, with her hair in her eyes, her hand went wide
of its target and slapped Frivole’s neck, thus further startling the mare, who
turned and trotted away. And because she was reaching out over the gate,
Barbara came down on the rail on her belly with enough force to knock the
breath out of her and leave her teetering dangerously, her feet on one side,
her head on the other.

Alphonse seized her by the hips and hauled her back, holding
her against him as she gasped for air.

“Is it I or the horse who is a pestilence?” he asked.

“Frivole! My crespine!” Barbara cried despairingly, ignoring
the facetious question as the mare tossed her head, sending the net, its beads
glittering, flying through the air into the trodden dust of the yard.

Laughing, Alphonse set her aside and leapt over the gate.
The horses all trotted away and he picked up the net and shook it. “Since you
do not think me a pestilence, I have saved your crespine. Do you want the
fillet too?” he called back.

“You are surely a plague, if not a pestilence,” Barbara
retorted. “No, I do not want the fillet. That idiot mare is chewing it.”

She brushed back her hair and reached for the net as
Alphonse came over the gate, but he held it away and said, “No, if I give it to
you, you will run away again. I have some questions I want answered.”

“I! Why should I run away?” Barbara asked with as much
indignation as she could muster. She held out her hand imperiously. “Give me my
crespine. Do not act like a naughty child. It does not befit a man of your age.”

He shook his head, but he was no longer laughing. “Is it
true that you have come to gather information on the invasion that Queen
Eleanor hopes will free her husband?” he asked. “She said she will not allow
you to return to England because she fears you have already learned too much
and will pass the information to Leicester.”

“I assure you I have not made the smallest effort to learn
what I should not,” Barbara said angrily. “Give me the net.”

“I was not accusing you of spying deliberately,” he said. “But—”

“No one hereabouts would need to spy deliberately,” Barbara
snapped. “Every mouth, including Queen Eleanor’s, pours forth a steady stream
of information. But I assure you, the Earl of Leicester has friends better
placed than I to send him important news.”

Alphonse sighed. “I am making you angry, and I do not mean
to. You must understand that I cannot help being partial to my aunt’s cause any
more than you can help being attached to your father’s. I was only trying to
discover if helping you would truly hurt Eleanor and Henry. But I cannot bear
for you to be unhappy, Barbe. If you are very eager to go back to England, I
will try to arrange it through Marguerite and Louis.”

“I would love to know why you are so eager to be rid of me.
Is this some ploy of Queen Eleanor’s to get me out of Boulogne before I learn
something she does not want me to know? Or do you have some private reason?
Unfortunately for you, it does not matter. I must stay in France for a while
whether you and the queen like it or not. Give me my net and I will go away and
promise to avoid you—”

“Like a plague?”

Alphonse laughed and held her crespine behind his back.
Barbara could see that the tension had gone out of him, but she could not guess
why. Because she was staying in Boulogne? She tried to crush that hope, and
told herself it was more likely because she had promised to avoid him.

“Sieur Alphonse—” she began with rigid formality.

“Tell me why you came,” he murmured, coming closer, “and why
you
must
stay.”

Barbara stared up at him, transfixed between rage and tears.
His playful manner and the relaxation she had seen in him when she said she
planned to remain in France had made her feel he had a special interest in her,
despite her efforts to remember that he had never wanted her. And now there was
something in his posture, in the low, deep voice, which touched her like a
caress, that woke sexual desire in her and implied it in him. But the words!
The words were pure politics! Queen Eleanor must be completely mad with
suspicion and had set him to
seduce
the truth—which she had already
told—out of her.