From the day we met, all Henry got from me was fire. A fire that never burned, but warmed, and singed his fingertips when he touched me. A fire that kept him in my bed for years longer than anyone said I could, for I was older than he by more than a decade, too old at twenty-nine to catch the eye of a king even when we met.
But Henry was no king then, only a hardscrabble warrior who would wrest a kingdom away from his mother’s enemy. He was a caged lion, pacing through Louis’ court like some apparition from another world. When I met his gray-eyed gaze for the first time, my husband, the King of France, stood beside me, but I knew that Henry would love me for the rest of my life. Well, I was wrong in that, too.
But the day he saw me, Henry wanted me, as he has wanted no other woman since. I know this, because I know him. The fact that I know him better than anyone alive on earth is why he took up Rosamund, and even now stays away from me.
I was thinking of Henry when Louis’ daughter arrived. I often think of Henry, when neither the speech of my women nor the songs of my men can beguile me into forgetfulness. I remembered his great, booming laugh, and his wide peasant hands that could span my waist and lift me as if I weighed nothing, though I am a tall woman, filled with strength. That was why I had loved him well; his strength matched mine, when he chose to use it.
I was sitting with my women when Alais came to me. My spy brought word from Southampton when she landed, and another brought word that she would arrive that day. I waited, watching out my window, enjoying the light breeze that rose past the castle walls to caress my face. The rain had finally stopped, and it seemed I could catch the scent of spring, damp earth, and sweet new grass.
Amaria, my favorite servingwoman, was reading to us from the Book of John. None of my women in England understood the irony of the Gospels being read aloud in my court. Few of the women here would return with me to Aquitaine, where the Court of Love was born, where I had been raised. But if Henry had heard the Gospel read in my court, he would have understood. He would have laughed with me, had he been there. Henry knew better than anyone how little stock I put in religion, and all its false trappings.
My women were the most educated in Christendom. I liked to remind myself, as well as them, of that, so I had them read aloud in Latin. They read the Gospels, and took in the word of God, and thought me pious, which was the ultimate irony. I simply enjoyed listening to the third language my father called on me to learn, after my native tongue, the langue d’oc, and, of course, Parisian French.
I loved most listening to the voice of a woman as she read aloud. In a world where most priests could not read, it meant something to me that my women, weak creatures that they were, could do what so many men, with all their strength and power, could not.
Though my father was long dead, his cathedral still stood. As Amaria read, my other women embroidered a great tapestry that would serve as the new altar cloth at his cathedral in Poitiers. They did fine work, better than any guild could produce, and it kept their hands busy and their minds out of mischief.
As the afternoon wore on, and the light began to fade, I thought to call on Bertrand, my favorite troubadour, to come abovestairs to give us a song. But I had yet to speak this thought aloud when the castle servants came to light the evening candles, taking the day lamps away
It was late that afternoon when one of Henry’s fools brought the girl to me. Her wimple was filthy, her silk gown so wrinkled and soiled from travel that she could never wear it again. She stood blinking even in the soft, fading light of my solar.
My women knew better than to laugh at the girl’s disheveled appearance outright, at least until I gave them leave. But I heard their laughter, tucked behind their teeth, waiting to come forth at the first sign of permission from me. I did not give it.
The princess looked as if she knew that they mocked her behind her back, that they would mock her to her face if I would allow it, but she did not heed them. She did not even give my ladies the courtesy of a glance. She kept her eyes on me.
I rose from my chair and faced that girl, looking into my old lover’s eyes. She did not flinch from my gaze, or cower, as I would have expected a child of Louis’ to do. Instead, her brown eyes met mine with a frankness that I have rarely seen, a steadfast gaze that seemed to take my measure, as if she thought to find me wanting.
The child was Louis’ daughter, but she was as strong as I was. The sight of that strength in another struck down all my defenses. I smiled at her.
The girl rose from her curtsy. She was a small child, but some woman had had the training of her, for she moved gracefully. I wondered for a fleeting moment if someone had had the sense to teach her to dance. I vowed that I would, if no one had done so already.
The sight of my smile brought a light into her eyes that had not been there before. She looked on me as a friend, as an equal, though no one had had the effrontery to look on me like that since the day Henry first saw me in Louis’ court. Yet this child met my gaze with the strength I never found in my own daughters, the strength I had always looked for in them but had never seen. I saw it now in her.
“Welcome, Princess Alais.”
She curtsied once more, this time not as deeply. I turned my eye on Henry’s fool, and stared him down.
“You bring to me the Countess of the Vexin, a princess of France, covered in dirt from the road, and blinking with exhaustion.”
Sir Reginald, although he was a knight of Shrewsbury, did not have the sense to bow again, and I saw that he was one of the men Henry kept about him who thought I should never have been queen. That a mere knight would seek to judge me caught my fancy, when it should have stoked my temper. I almost laughed in his face, but I thought better of it and decided to frighten him instead. In swallowing my laughter, I met the princess’ eyes.
Princess Alais smiled at me, as if we were conspirators and this man was our dupe. When she smiled, it was as if the sun had risen there in the room. As she watched Sir Reginald squirm before me, I saw that she hated him, that he had done nothing to comfort her on her long journey from her home. He had probably not even had the sense to give her care over to a woman in the evenings, just as Louis had not had the sense to send a woman with her.
The stupidity of men made my smile widen, and as I watched, the princess covered her mouth with her hand. She tried to catch her laughter, to swallow it down, but as we looked at each other, conspirators together, she failed.
Her laughter rang out like the sweet peal of a bell, the bell that had once rung from my father’s chapel in Poitiers. I seemed to hear my own laughter in hers, the laughter my father had always drawn from me, as no one else but Henry had ever done. That old carefree laughter rose in me, after many years of silence. I could not catch it, or hold it back.
Sir Reginald knelt before me then, frightened in truth, as well he should have been. But as the daughter I should have had stepped close to stand beside me, I knew that I would let him go.
“Get out,” I said. “And don’t ever come into my sight again.”
The sound of these words gave my new daughter pleasure, and she laughed again.
My ladies, shocked at my behavior, for once did not laugh to placate me or to join in a joke they did not understand. When I waved one hand, they left, too, so that the little princess and I stood alone.
“You made him afraid,” Alais said, awe in her voice, as if I had worked some feat of magic.
I gave her my hand, and she kissed it with reverence. I could not let her fall into reverence with me. I would take worship from anyone else, but from her, I wanted love.
“No, Alais, no hand kissing, if you please. The man is a fool, and all fools must be laughed at.”
“It is not so in France.”
I met her solemn eyes, and drew her ruined wimple from her hair. Her curls were a riot of brown and auburn and maple, soft and fine, but full, with a life of their own. I smoothed her hair back from her face, and almost leaned down to kiss her. I stopped myself, in case I might frighten her with too much affection, and from a stranger.
But we were no strangers, not from the first. Alais stared back at me with the knowledge of my soul in her eyes, as if she could see through my mask, not only to the woman I was, but to the woman I wanted most to be. I did kiss her then, the skin of her cheek soft under my lips. She smelled of sweat and road dust, and I knew I must see to her comfort. I would leave her well-being to no one else.
“Come with me,” I said, taking her hand.
She did not move to follow, but stared at me, all traces of laughter gone from her eyes.
“You were my father’s wife,” she said.
She spoke with such sudden horror that I faced her once more. This matter would be dealt with, before we could go on. Alais, it would be better if we both agreed never to speak of the past.“
She did not obey me blindly. She did not nod to placate me, as anyone else might have done. She gazed at me solemnly, taking me in as few ever had in my life, only Henry and, before him, my father. I saw the wheels of her mind turn as she considered what I said. I watched her love for her father war with her newborn love for me. I did not win that battle, but neither did I lose it.
“All right,” she said. “I will forget.”
She gave that concession freely, and I had not even asked it of her. I kissed her again, and she leaned close to me, like a bird taking shelter from a storm. I did not draw her from the room as I had meant to, but held her close, kneeling beside her, as if she were my daughter in truth.
We went, hand in hand, down the long dark corridor to my rooms. The torches were not lit at Winchester when the king was not there, and I liked it that way. The whitewashed walls were still wet from the rains we had had the day before, but even now the damp was rising off the stone. The days were growing warmer, and I welcomed the spring.
I had a boy to lead me with a lamp, as down a long and winding street. He left us outside my rooms, and when I opened the door, I found my women waiting for me.
My ladies-in-waiting stepped forward, or rose from their chairs to curtsy to me.
“Your Majesty,” Amaria said. “You come here unattended?”
“No, indeed. I come here with the Princess of France.”
Amaria heard the unspoken order in my voice, and she curtsied at once to Alais.
Alais stood beside me, her hand still in mine, taking my lady-in-waiting’s offering as her due, as indeed it was.
The rest of my women saw my face, and followed Amaria in their obeisance, before I raised my hand once more to dismiss them. As they left, I instructed them, “Ladies, please tell His Holiness the bishop that I will not be attending tonight’s feast.”
“As you say, Your Highness.” Amaria bowed, looking to Alais once more.
The little princess met her eyes, but her face was inscrutable. Once again, I saw Louis in her.
My women left us alone with the castle servants, who knew my habits, and had already begun to prepare my bath. Alais watched them with wide eyes as those women brought an almost endless stream of hot water from the kitchens, water that I had them heat every day, whether they thought me a witch or not. Of course, no one would have the temerity to name me a witch aloud, not even to whisper it. Though I was separated from Henry, I was still queen.
The women left the heated water standing in its tub, and my dressing women came forward to take my gown. I raised my hand, and stopped them.
“The princess will bathe first.”
Her eyes lit with fear. Alais would have run had I not been holding her hand. As it was, she stood caught, like a boar in a net, like a deer that first scents the hunter.
“I must bathe?” she whispered to me.
“Every day, little princess. As I do.”
She turned her eyes on me, the light maple brown that took me in and held me as no other eyes have, before or since. She measured me and my words together.
“You bathe?” she asked, as if to make certain she had heard me right.
“I do.”
“Every day?”
“Yes,” I said. “And so will you.”
I do not know what nonsense the child had been taught at Louis’ court about the dangers of getting wet, or the Church’s strictures about mortification of the flesh. I could only imagine what had been wrought in Paris since my time. Even when I was queen in France, only a handful of courtiers had been brave enough to bathe weekly, and those few did so only to please me. I had been the only one to bathe daily, except early in my marriage, when I tempted Louis into the bath with me.
I turned my mind from such musings. I could not think of my ex-lover as I looked upon his daughter.
She was braver than many French before her. She stared into the tub as if it were filled with acid and not with water. She stood still and staring as my women stripped her down to her shift.
They saw that she had no baggage with her. I discovered later that Louis had sent a paltry bag of gowns and shifts, things I would not give a servant, much less dress my daughter in. As soon as I saw that bag, I had them take it away. I would order new gowns made for her myself.
My dressing women stepped forward and offered their hands to her, which she took, raising first one foot and then the next into the bath. The warm water was an unexpected delight, and her eyes darted to mine. I saw that she had never had the pleasure of submerging herself in warm water before. Once more I cursed Louis and all Parisians for fools.
Alais stood still and let my women wash her, their hands gentle beneath her shift. They knew that she was far too modest a child to bathe naked, as I did. The largest of my women washed her hair gently, then lifted her from the tub as if she weighed nothing.