Captive Queen

Ranulf was aware—had been for a long time—that he’d come dangerously close to falling in love with his prisoner; that his infatuation had increased to the point where he’d been in peril of losing the objectivity that all conscientious gaolers need to maintain. Privately, he thought his king a fool. Eleanor was an intelligent woman, amenable to reason; a year in prison would have been enough to curb her rebellious spirit. And the situation had been far more complex than Henry would seem to have believed—anyone could see that.

He pulled himself up, reminded himself that this woman had betrayed her lord and king, and that society justly condemned her for it. He reminded himself, as he had countless times, how he would feel if his faithful Bertha had done such a thing—but of course it would never enter her head, for she was as docile and biddable as a cow. And Eleanor was not Bertha—More’s the pity, said the treacherous little devil in his soul. But after the expiation of sins there must come forgiveness. It was sad that it had taken the Young King’s death to bring Henry to that point, but fitting that he should take his wife back unto himself. All the same, Ranulf knew he was going to miss her …

Amaria was reveling in her mistress’s newfound liberty, but as they journeyed the roads of Normandy, passing apple orchards and lush swaths of fertile farmland, with here and there a stern castle, a bustling town, a soaring abbey or sleepy hamlet, her excitement was increasingly tempered by a festering anxiety. When the Queen was restored to her proper place, would she still want a peasant for a serving woman, when she could have the greatest ladies in the land to attend upon her?

For the truth was, Amaria had grown to love Queen Eleanor. What began in disapproval and suspicion ended in deep affection and loyalty, for never once had Eleanor done anything to confirm Amaria’s earlier opinion of her. And she had suffered so much … and all for love of her children—that much was abundantly clear. Amaria knew what it was to love a child, and she knew too that if her Mark had ever been treated unjustly by his late lamented father, she would have sprung like a lioness to his defense.

She had asked herself again and again if she dared question Eleanor about what was to become of her now, but the truth was, she feared to hear the answer. The Queen had made her a promise, but what if she now wished to forget the woman who had shared her long imprisonment? That would be wholly understandable, of course, but did loyalty and friendship count for nothing? And there had been friendship between mistress and maid—she had not imagined it; every day she had marveled that she, a humble miller’s daughter, should be the friend of the King’s own consort, the woman who, by rights, should be queening it over half of Christendom!

Not long now to Rouen. She would be glad of a soft bed, after hours of jolting in an unfamiliar saddle—and she no horsewoman, by anybody’s reckoning! But what would happen when they got to Rouen? Amaria dreaded to think of that.

Eleanor, riding beside her, turned and smiled.

“Is it not wonderful to be away from that dreary castle!” she cried. “Cheer up, Amaria—we are free! There is no need to look so dismal. I promise you, when we get to Rouen, I will order us both some fine bliauts. I expect mine will have rotted away by now.” Most of her wardrobe had been left in Poitiers.

“My lady, what use would I have for fine bliauts?” Amaria asked, but her heart was welling with excitement, for already she knew the answer.

“For wearing at court, of course!” the Queen replied. “I cannot have my ladies attending me in plain woolen gowns and wimples. I had three chief damsels—Torqueri, Florine, and Mamille—and now I will have four, including you. I only hope that the others can come back to me—I know you will like them!”

Amaria’s cup ran over.

It was dark by the time they approached Rouen and clattered into the courtyard of the ducal palace beyond the city walls, and torches lit Eleanor’s way as she was escorted up the spiral stairs to the royal lodgings in the great tower. The King had dined alone, she was told, and would receive her in private. Her spirits lifted in relief. She had been dreading this moment more than she would even admit to herself, and was supremely thankful, much as she had been ten years earlier, that her reunion with Henry was not to take place in public with the whole court looking on.

Through a window slit on the stairwell she briefly glimpsed the tower where she had first been held. If I had known then what lay ahead, I might have tried to kill myself in despair, she thought. Thank God we are not vouchsafed the knowledge of what is in store for us. She wondered, with hope and dread in her soul, what lay ahead now.

The door opened into a barrel-vaulted chamber lit with candle sconces and hung with tapestries in vivid hues; above them she glimpsed painted friezes with scarlet and gold roundels, and at one end of the room there hung a majestic canopy embroidered with the lions of Anjou and Poitou. Beneath it stood a golden throne with its carved arms and back painted bright indigo. Evidently Henry lived in greater state these days than he used to. All this Eleanor took in with one glance before her eyes met those of the man who had risen from the long table in the center and come limping toward her.

She was shocked to her core. This was not the Henry she remembered so vividly, but an old man. In the brief glimpse she had of him before she sank in a deep and graceful curtsey to the floor, she took in the iron-gray hair, the stocky, corpulent body, the bowed legs, no doubt made so by years of hard riding around his vast empire, and that painful limp. His face was lined and drawn with care and grief, his gray eyes wary and bloodshot—he did not look a well man. And he must be, what, fifty? He looked far older. She was astonished to find herself feeling pain—and another, deeper emotion—at the sight of him, which was incredible, indeed after all that he had done to her. All that we have done to each other, the voice of her conscience corrected her.

Henry stepped forward, stretched out his hands—his familiar, callused hands, much rougher now than in former days—and raised Eleanor by the elbows. Then he let his hands fall and they stood there appraising each other, neither of them knowing quite what to say. What does one say to the wife one has kept a prisoner for so long? each was thinking.

Henry had rehearsed this scene over and over again in his mind. He had resolved to be businesslike and tell Eleanor that her presence in Normandy was needed in order to counteract King Philip’s demands for the return of lands she had assigned for her lifetime to the Young King, but that Philip was now insisting belonged to Queen Marguerite in right of her late husband. But seeing his queen now, standing there before him, he could not say it. Those demands had been a pretext: he had known that all along, if he were honest with himself. The truth was that since the terrible news had come from Martel, he had felt differently about Eleanor. Instead of the archtraitress who had betrayed her lord and king, and who must be kept under lock and key for everyone’s safety, he could conjure up only images of her as a young mother, swinging Young Henry up in the air, happily arranging a birthday celebration for him, kissing his hurts better, Eleanor pleading with him, as the boy grew older, to give him what she’d called his rightful dues. Had she been so wrong to support her son? Had her shattering betrayal been motivated by nothing worse than motherly love?

Yet she had hurt him, her husband, irrevocably, rocked his throne more dangerously even than had the murder of Thomas, and seemed to do it purposefully to bring him to ruin. But now all he could see was the woman who had borne him the child they had lost, the only one who really knew what he was suffering. And when he saw her, in the flesh, standing before him at last, after a decade of absence, there stirred in him, along with pity and the need for comfort, some vestiges of the feelings that he had long told himself were dead and buried—killed off brutally by her faithlessness.

For still she was beautiful. He did a quick reckoning. Sixty-one? Impossible. But yes, she was eleven years older than he. Tall and dignified in her elegant mourning robes, with her gossamer-thin black veil falling from a black coif, her heart-shaped face was framed in the most flattering manner by the matching barbette that creased in linen folds under her chin. Her eyes were clear, if questioning, her skin smooth and pale as marble, her mouth bow- shaped yet. But it was the expression on her face that struck him most: there was a new serenity about her, the promise of hard-learned wisdom in those eyes, and an indefinable aura of spiritual peace. It occurred to him suddenly that this woman might no longer be a threat to him.

“My lady,” he said at length. “Welcome. I trust you had a good journey.”

“Wonderful,” she answered. “I cannot tell you how good it felt to be out in the world, enjoying God’s good fresh air again.”

Was she baiting him already? He looked at her sharply, yet could detect no malice in her, and could only