Harry looks. In a walled garden, a middle-aged woman stands at a bush heavy with pink flowers. She is fair-haired and curvy, and richly dressed. Two handmaidens wait behind her. The woman isn’t familiar, Harry thinks. But then his eyes go up to the banner flying from the castle: lilies and lions, quartered.
Lilies for France, and lions for England.
He sucks in a breath. ‘Isabella,’ he says. ‘The Queen Mother.’
Alys says nothing else, and Harry watches the woman, the queen who invaded her adopted country and toppled her own husband before she herself was brought low by her son, as she dodders about in rural exile. She clips an early flower. It falls to her feet, and a handmaiden scrambles to pick it up and place it in her basket. As she progresses to the next clump of bushes, a scarf slips from her hand, and one of her attendants snatches it up before it touches the ground. The maid then runs around in front of the Queen Mother and kneels, proffering its return. When the maid stands, her skirts are stained from the dewy ground.
Not once does Isabella look at the women, or address them. They are simply the furniture of her life, like a bench, or a tapestry.
‘I am fond of her, in a way,’ sighs Alys. ‘She was a very ambitious woman, daughter of a strong king and married off to a weak one, who ignored her. With a better match, and a little more art to her ways, she could have united her two countries.’ She darts a mischievous look at Harry, through her lashes. ‘Do you want to hear my favourite story about her?’
‘I always want to hear your stories,’ Harry says warmly.
‘Flatterer,’ Alys snorts. ‘This one might change your mind. It takes place when Isabella was seventeen. Already married to Edward of Carnarvon for five years. And she had a son. An heir, potentially to two kingdoms.’
‘Our Edward,’ Harry supplies. ‘Edward of Windsor. The King.’
‘Indeed,’ Alys continues. ‘And one day fate handed her an easy way to undermine her own dynasty back in France, the Capets. It started when she made her sisters-in-law, the wives of two of her younger brothers, some needlework purses one Christmas. She was surprised to see those purses again in the spring, carried by two handsome young Norman knights. So she waited, and organised her spies, until she learned that the sisters and the knights were planning to meet in secret at the Tour de Nesle, a discreet little keep across the Seine from Paris’s royal palace. Isabella’s men swooped in and had them all revealed as adulteresses. See, Isabella wanted both France and England for her son, so she needed to remove the competition. The women were cast out and those two brothers, Kings of France one after the other, produced no viable heirs.’
‘That …’ Harry begins. He hasn’t the words. ‘That is the most vicious, cold-blooded thing I’ve ever heard. To her own family.’
‘Ah, but that’s not the best of it,’ Alys continues, as they watch Dowager Queen Isabella potter about her flower garden. ‘Her sisters-in-law were not even the point of her scheme. They were merely collateral damage.’
‘Who was Isabella’s target?’ Harry asks.
‘Her older sister, Philip’s first child,’ Alys says. ‘The favourite. Betrothed to the Holy Roman Emperor, but in love, they say, with a Scottish lord. He was also at the Tour de Nesle that fateful night. The scandal was enough for His Imperial Majesty to break off the betrothal. Philip was furious. He did everything but disinherit her. Within the letter of the law, she was still legally a princess of France, but in spirit? She was cut off. Financially. Socially. She had been as headstrong and wilful as her father, and he ruined her for it.’
‘My God,’ Harry mutters. ‘What a father to have.’
‘I’m not sure it’s possible to be a good father and a great king at the same time,’ Alys says, nudging her horse into a walk. The chestnut palfrey follows the trail as it loops downwards, away from the little castle, towards Newmarket again. ‘Philip chose greatness. For himself; for France.’ She looks up at Harry, her keenly intelligent eyes searching out his blue ones. ‘My own father was ambassador to the French court for a while, you know, and met Philip the Fair. He was aptly nicknamed. Tall, dark hair, pale eyes. Cleft chin. Ridiculously handsome. A sort of fairy-tale image of a king.’ Alys tilts her head, as if making a very important point. ‘And his eldest daughter took after him.’
Harry has a horrible, sinking feeling in his stomach. He manages to choke out, ‘What happened to her?’
Alys smiles. ‘She vanished. Probably for the best. Think what would have happened if she had married and produced an heir. The boy would have a stronger claim to the throne of France than either King Edward or Philip of Valois. Imagine the trouble, my God.’
‘What was her name, Alys?’ Harry says. He feels nauseous, his entire body wracked with pins and needles.
‘Hm?’ Alys says, all innocence.
‘The daughter,’ Harry grits out. ‘The favourite.’
‘Didn’t think you were interested in French royal politics,’ Alys hums, patting her horse.
‘Alys,’ Harry growls.
‘You know her name, Harry,’ Alys admonishes.
He closes his eyes and breathes the name that a scared boy with a broken leg whispered to him on a dark night months ago: ‘Marguerite.’
‘Yes. See? You do know the answers. Most people presume her dead by now, of course,’ Alys says.
‘She is. Dead,’ Harry stutters. ‘She died. Last year.’
‘What a shame,’ Alys says. ‘I would have liked to meet her. She lived life on her terms and hers alone. Few have the courage to do that.’
‘I … I have to go, Alys,’ Harry says.
By the time Harry reaches the tournament fields, he’s managed to calm himself, slowing from the heedless gallop with which he’d abandoned Alys and Lady Fatima to a safer, more appropriate walk. He
