years. Why had Hal not tried to see her? Richard would have, even if it meant scaling the castle walls in the dead of night. Rhiannon was looking troubled, and she roused herself, saying lightly, “Of course you are not really riding all the way from Wales to visit with Harry, are you? Your son Morgan is still in his household, no?”
Rhiannon laughed. “You’ve caught us out,” she admitted. “Morgan is the lure-” She stopped suddenly, head cocked to the side. “What was that noise? Are we alone?”
“No, not exactly. That was Edith, my maid. We can speak freely in front of her, for she speaks no French, only English.” Eleanor’s smile was wry. “She is useful at times, but as a companion, she leaves much to be desired. I have wine, Rhiannon. Would you…” Getting a polite refusal, she leaned over and covered the other woman’s hand with her own. “Tell me of my children.”
Rhiannon did. Joanna was still at Devizes with Constance and Alys, but she was sure the girl would be at Windsor for the Christmas Court, and so would John. Hal and Marguerite would be there, too, of course. Richard and Geoffrey would be holding their own courts, in Poitou and Brittany. They had both enjoyed considerable success in the field, she reported, knowing how proud Eleanor would be. Richard had captured the rebel stronghold of Castillon-sur-Agen that past August after a two-month siege, and the Countess of Chester had written to Ranulf that Geoffrey had Eudo de Porhoet on the run.
“The Countess of Chester,” Eleanor said softly. “Is she well?” And when Rhiannon affirmed it, she forced herself to ask, even though she dreaded the answer. “What of her son? Is Hugh still being held prisoner?”
“No,” Rhiannon said. “He was freed last year, in October, I believe, although his lands have not been restored to him yet.”
“Gratia Dei,” Eleanor whispered, closing her eyes for a moment, and Rhiannon, who was as perceptive as her husband, squeezed her hand affectionately.
“I do have some sad news, though,” she said. “Ranulf’s brother died in July.”
“Rainald? I am sorry to hear that,” Eleanor said, and she was; she’d always had a liking for Henry’s cheery, brash uncle. “Was he long ill?”
“No, it was sudden. He’d been with the king at Woodstock a fortnight earlier, and seemed quite well. He was no longer young, of course.”
“None of us are,” Eleanor said with a sigh. “So…my sons have truly been forgiven, are back in Harry’s good graces?” And she felt both relief and a prickling of resentment when Rhiannon assured her that family peace had indeed been restored. “Rhiannon, I will never forget your kindness in coming to see me, especially since you had to defy Ranulf to do it. I hope to God I have not caused harm to your marriage.”
“You need not worry, my lady,” Rhiannon said with a quick smile. “It is true that Ranulf was not pleased with me. But he knows full well that Welshwomen are not as submissive and docile as our English sisters. We have minds of our own. And I was not going to let him stop me from visiting you. You spoke of my ‘kindness.’ Well, I am only repaying yours to me, during those months when I was stranded at your court whilst our husbands were chasing about France.”
“Ah, yes,” Eleanor said. “I remember. I was with child-Geoffrey-so that was seventeen years ago. When we got word that Harry’s brother Geoff had died of a sudden, Harry and Ranulf hastened over to Rouen to comfort Maude. They were supposed to return within a fortnight, but it was nigh on four months ere Ranulf came back to England and another month after that ere I was reunited with Harry for our Christmas Court…”
She was quiet for a time, remembering. The men had trooped into the solar at Winchester Castle, muddied and boisterous and jubilant after a day’s good hunting. For a moment, she thought she could actually hear echoes of their raucous laughter on the wind. Henry had pulled her into his lap as he told Ranulf of Thomas Becket’s recent, spectacular entry into Paris, vastly amused by his chancellor’s flair for the dramatic. When she’d asked for a cushion for her aching back, he’d obliged with a grin, saying to the others, “Imagine how she’d order me around if I were not a king.”
Rhiannon was sorry she’d reminded the queen of a time when her marriage was a source of joy, not misery. Hoping to distract Eleanor from memories that served only to hurt, she said hastily, “I was so homesick for Wales, missing Ranulf and feeling like a stranger in an alien land. If you’d not been so good to me, I truly do not know how I would have endured those wretched months.”
“Your visit today eclipses any kindnesses I may have shown you,” Eleanor assured her. “Rhiannon…may I ask you about your blindness? But if you’d rather not talk about it-”
“Other people are the ones who have difficulty speaking of it, not me.”
“You were not born blind, were you?” Eleanor asked, hoping that her memory was not playing her false.
“No, I was not. I lost the sight in one eye when I was eight after I was hit by an ice-encrusted snowball. But within a year, I lost the sight in my other eye, too. My father consulted every physician in Wales, and they all said the same. They did not know why my other eye should also fail, but it was often the case with such injuries, and nothing could be done. My mother would have wrapped me in soft wool, coddled me till her last breath, but my father, bless him, would have none of that. He insisted that I ‘defy the dark,’ live my life as if I were still sighted. I learned to play a harp, to sew and do household chores, even to ride a horse, finding ways to compensate for my lack of sight. It was not easy, but I was so lucky, my lady, that my father was so stubborn!” A fleeting smile touched her lips. “The blind are often hidden away from the world, as if they are a cause for shame.”
Eleanor had listened intently, and was quiet for a few moments. “I’ve met few people as calm, as contented as you, Rhiannon. You always seemed to me like a serene small island in a turbulent sea. I often wondered how you’d achieved that sense of peace, given how severely you’d been tested by the Almighty.”
By now Rhiannon had grasped which way the wind was blowing. “Acceptance of life’s setbacks is never easy, my lady. For me, the hardest time came when I reached marriageable age, when I realized that few men would be willing to take a blind wife. But my father never let me wallow in self-pity, and his own life was so beset with tragedy that he’d earned the right to speak on the subject.”
Eleanor knew very little of Rhiannon’s father, save that he’d been crippled some years ago when he’d been trampled by a runaway horse. “What losses did your father suffer?”
“His brothers and sisters had all died ere their time. He found great contentment in marriage to my mother, but he lost her, too, and of the six children she’d borne him, three were stillborn or died in the cradle. Only my brother Cadell, my sister Eleri, and I survived childhood. Cadell died at twenty, thrown from his horse, and when my father wed again, his new wife proved barren, but he was too fond of her to put her aside, even though he no longer had a male heir and his lands could have been forfeit to his prince when he died.”
Eleanor agreed that Rhodri ap Rhys had been visited far more than he ought by the Grim Reaper. Thinking the man might better have been named Job than Rhodri, she said, “So how did he cope?”
“He dealt with his disappointments as he’d dealt with his blind daughter, by seeking to change what could be changed and accepting what could not. He taught me to acknowledge my mistakes, to learn from them, and then put them aside. He never let me forget that the morrow might bring greater glory than yesterday’s ills, for none of us know the Divine Plan of Our Saviour. In that, we are all blind, and see through a glass, darkly.”
Rhiannon smiled again, a smile that spilled sunlight into the dimly lit chamber. “And indeed, good did come with the bad. Ranulf came back to us, filling the hole left in our hearts by Cadell’s death. When we least expected it, my father found a male heir to save his lands and I found joy beyond imagining. And Ranulf…he found what he most needed, a way to heal, to escape a past weighted down with regrets and remorse and guilt. Not a day passes that I do not thank the Almighty for His Blessings, but not a day passes that I do not thank my father, too, for teaching me that there is a time for every purpose under the heaven and the greatest gift we can offer Our Lord God is to pray with a loving, humble heart, ‘Not what I will, but what Thou wilt.’”
Eleanor’s eyes searched the other woman’s face, but she felt letdown, hoping for more than that. “You make it sound so simple,” she said, and Rhiannon shook her head so vehemently that her veil swung from side to side.
“Oh, no,” she said. “It is not simple at all. Indeed, it may be the most difficult task you ever undertake in this life, my lady. But think upon this. What other choices have you?”
If Eleanor had been surprised by Rhiannon’s unexpected visit, she was dumbfounded by the identity of her next visitor. On a cold, overcast day in late December, that same mournful servant announced the arrival of the Lady Emma, sister of the English king.
Emma had taken one disapproving glance at Eleanor’s accommodations and sent the plump, moon-faced
