Chapter 3 ALAIS: A STOLEN SEASON

Abbey of St. Agnes, Bath May 1169 I cannot tell you how I loved Eleanor. From the first moment I met her, I knew I would love her all my life. Eleanor took me in and sheltered me when I had nothing and no one. The food I eat, the wine I drink, the way I bathe, even my strategies at chess, were all learned at her hands. She kept me with her for months when I first came to England, though she and the king had planned to send me to a nunnery to be raised by the sisters until the time came for my marriage to their son. Eleanor kept me by her far longer than she was meant to. I believe that once I was with her, once we had found such kinship un-looked for, she did not want to let me go. Perhaps she hoped that King Henry would simply forget that I had come, and she could keep me with her indefinitely. During our time together, Eleanor taught me a little dancing, how to play a lute, how to smile graciously at fools. She taught me all these lessons and more. Her hair was the color of burnished bronze where it peeped out from beneath her wimple. She let me brush it every night, after she sent her women away, when we were left alone. And always, from the first moment I saw her, I knew why my father once had loved her. For she was the most beautiful woman in the world. It was her bones that held her beauty, the strong cheekbones and chin that were softened by her hair and the folds of her wimple and gown. Her slanted eyes were a deep green, and they flashed at me from the moment I met her, as if to say she knew me already Our stolen season could not last. I knew, even as a child, that it would not. The devil queen of my childhood fancies had long since vanished from my mind, to be replaced by Eleanor in all her power, her musical, wicked laugh, her way of seeing the world, so different from any other I had ever known. The letter from the king came one day when she was teaching me a dance by the fire. The king wrote that it was time for me to go to the nunnery they had long since chosen for me; the abbess, Mother Sebastian, waited for me. Eleanor tossed his letter into the fire with a laugh and a contemptuous flick of her wrist, but I knew that she would have to let me go. For Henry was king. Even Eleanor could not stand against that. And I knew that she had stayed away from her lands in the south, for love of me. She would take her children and return there once I was tucked safe away in my abbey. So that spring, in late May, Eleanor and I rode together in a litter to the Sisters of St. Agnes outside Bath. Those old Norman stones had stood a hundred years when I first knew them, and would stand a hundred more after I was gone. Eleanor spent that first night with me, her hand on my hair. I hoped that she might stay with me longer, but I knew she could not. Though she was my mother, elsewhere, she was queen. So the next day we stood in the stone courtyard of that nunnery, Mother Sebastian waiting patiently while I took my leave. Eleanor was clothed from head to foot in emerald silk, her linen wimple white against the drab gray stone. I was dressed in the black wool of the nunnery. Already I missed the fine silk dresses that Eleanor once had given me, the dresses that now she was taking away with her. I could not wear such things in the house of God. The queen drew me close, ignoring all the sisters who stood staring at us, and the men-at-arms who would take her back to her castle at Winchester. She knelt beside me there on those stones, and drew me close to her heart. “I will come back for you, as soon as I am able.” She kissed me, and drew a ribbon from the sleeve of her gown. She pressed the silk into my palm. “Take this, so that you have something pretty to remember me by.” She watched me, and I stood without weeping. She had taught me well; already I was strong enough to heed her. “Good girl,” she said, and kissed me. “Remember, you are a princess of France.” I stood in the courtyard and watched her litter disappear down the road that had no turning. I watched until she was too small to see any longer, vanished into the dust of the horizon. The Mother came to me then, and hugged me close, telling me that it was time for prayers. I drew out my father’s prayer beads, the only beautiful thing I still had with me. That and the silk ribbon from Eleanor’s gown. I slept with that ribbon clutched in my palm for a month, but as I settled into life at the nunnery, I laid it by. I used it during those years to bind the letters that Eleanor sent to me without fail, at Christmas, and on my saint’s day. My years at the nunnery were more peaceful than any I have known before or since. We were called to prayer each morning by the bell in the churchyard. The abbey did not ring many bells at once, as I was used to hearing at home in Paris. Instead we answered to the sweet, high sound of one bell echoing, like a woman’s voice, calling us to God. Our time was meted out to us by the sound of that one bell: time for mass, time to eat, time to pray. The abbess, Mother Sebastian, looked after me. I lived with the nuns of the abbey, but their days were not my days. While the sisters worked, tutors saw me, closely chaperoned by the Mother in my rooms. Language instructors came to teach me Spanish, and a traveling priest came to teach me better Latin. Latin was the only language I had learned to read and write well, and I improved greatly under Father Anthony’s tutelage. After a year he declared that he had no more to teach me, and he went away. So my only instruction in Latin after that came from the Mother herself. When I passed twelve summers, the Mother took me into the simples garden and showed me how to tend the herbs and plants that lived there. She had given me all of her Church Latin, so now she taught me the names of plants, what they were good for, how some were aids in healing, and others aids in death. There was a fountain in this garden, a small one that never ran dry Sometimes when we were done working, the Mother and I would sit beside it, sipping cool, clear water from a dried gourd. My favorite of all my work, what I loved more than the garden, more than prayer, was to sit in the small library and work with Sister Bernard on the illuminations. We were a small house, but we had the queen’s favor, so others who sought her favor as well would often send us requests for small books. They would ask for a woman’s prayer book very rarely, or sometimes for a Gospel for a small church that had just received an endowment from the Crown. It was considered odd for women to paint illuminations, but Sister Bernard had a gift, and what little she could teach of it, she gave to me. The day I first found her painting, I gasped to see the colors take shape under her hands. She was working on a small book, its vellum old, scraped many times. But Sister Bernard worked as if the words she drew would last into eternity. Being the Word of God, I suppose they will, though not the ones drawn by her hand. I watched her for hours, not returning to my rooms or even to the simples garden to meet the Mother. Mother Sebastian came to find me, and when she saw the look on my face, I did not have to ask permission to stay. She granted the requests she could, for I asked for very little. So time was taken out of my day to work with Sister Bernard. At first, I could do only the calligraphy, for we could not risk the costly colors on my lessons. But even the Mother agreed that no one seeing the book when it was finished would be able to tell that it had not been written by a man. After a few months, I was allowed to paint with color. Sister Bernard stood next to me by my high table and stool. We sat in full sunlight when we could and brought lamps when it was raining. We needed light for our work, as the rest of the nunnery did not. I dipped my brush in the vermilion paint, and began the first word of the Gospel of Saint John. I felt as if the hand of God guided me, keeping me from any mistake. The first letter was done last, after the rest of the calligraphy had dried. It was a testament to the rest of the work, one that would draw the eye and bring the reader’s mind to God. This was a simple Psalter, with no other illumination than the first letter of the first page. Some country squire had ordered it to further his place at court, and it was deemed a good book for me to begin on. The Mother came to see the book after it had dried. Sister Bernard and I had worked on this one Psalter for months. We were sorry now that it was done and would go out into the world, away from us. I stood by the Mother and looked down at my work. It seemed to me that it had been done by another. How could the hand of a princess, born only for marriage, draw even a shadow of the mind of God? The Mother answered this question for me, though I had not asked it out loud. “Our gifts come through us from God, and go back to God from whence they came. We are only their keepers for a little while, sometime stewards of God’s inward grace.” Sister Bernard nodded, and I found myself comforted. This Psalter, and every illumination I did after it, belonged to God. It was for me to let them go. I was at the work of painting illuminations, on a day in my fourteenth spring, when the queen came back for me. I sat at my high table, the sunlight warm on my hands. The light brought out the auburn hidden in the brown of my hair. “You have grown beautiful, little princess. I would not have known you.” Eleanor stood in the doorway of the cloister garden, her eyes on me. Her bronze hair was hidden under her wimple, but I could see her green eyes glinting. She had not aged a day. It was as if she had prayed to the Virgin to stay ever youthful, ever beautiful, the better to hold all men in her sway. I sat there, thinking these things, caught, as all men are, by the power of her eyes. Then she smiled at me, and she was the woman I remembered, the woman who had made me welcome when I had nothing, and no one. The child in me wanted to run to her, to feel her arms around me. But I was a woman now, and it had been almost three years since I had last seen her. Then, too, as always, she was queen. The court manners I had mastered as soon as I learned to walk called to me from my childhood. Long ago, I had known when to bow and when to kneel, and had done so as thoughtlessly as I drew my next breath. I laid my paintbrush down, knowing that I might never take it up again. Eleanor had come for me, and I must follow her. I had not come among my father’s enemies to become a woman of God. I had come to marry, and to hold the English king to our treaty, if I could. I had come to give my life, and the lives of my children, to keep the fragile peace. I climbed down from my stool gracefully, and curtsied to Eleanor. The queen bent close to my table to better see my work. After looking at the parchment for a long time, Eleanor raised her head and stared at me. “I did not know you had such work in you, Alais.” “Neither did I, Your Majesty. Until God showed me.” At the mention of God, Eleanor stepped away from my worktable. “I am glad that you have learned this art, Princess, but what of the other things I ordered you to learn? Do you practice your Latin and your Spanish?” “Yes, Your Majesty.” I moved toward her, feeling her eyes on me as if they were hands, reaching out to trip me. I did not falter. I stood beside her in the sunlight and let her look her fill. Eleanor took my chin in her hand and turned my face to the sunlight. “You move well,” she said, “though I would teach you different ways of walking. I did not send you here to make a nun of you, but a strong woman who will be the mother of my grandsons.” “Yes, Your Majesty.” She looked at my skin, at the youthful flawlessness of my complexion. I bathed my face in goats’ milk once a day at the Mother’s insistence. I had always thought it a foolish practice, but now, as I stood under the queen’s scrutiny, I was glad that I had. I stared into Eleanor’s eyes, and wondered if she had become a stranger. It was then that she smiled at me, and I knew her once more. “I missed you, Alais. More than you know.” Even then, I did not wrap my arms around her, but waited. I knew it was not my place. It was for her to bring me close, if she wished it. Eleanor raised her jeweled hands. She took my face between her palms so that I could not look away. “I will bring you to my son. But for as long as I can, I will keep you with me.” She kissed me then, and I clutched her as I had longed to do for all the years we had been apart. Eleanor held me close, her strength flowing into me, so that I felt truly myself once more for the first time since she went away.