PART I CHILDHOOD Chapter 1 ALAIS: PRINCESS OF FRANCE

?le-de-France February 1169 My mother died the day I was born. I now know that this was in no way unusual, but for the first years of my life, I felt quite singled out by the hand of God. She was a great loss to me, my first loss, though I never knew her. My nurse often told me that I have her bright eyes. On the day I was born, the King of France gained only me, another daughter who was useless except for the alliance my marriage might bring. The day that brought me also brought the death of his queen, so that after a decent period of mourning, my father had to go about the tedious business of finding a new one, and starting all over again. My mother was Spanish, and a great lady, or so everyone said. Of course, they would have told me no different, even if she had been a shrew. My father, King Louis, the seventh of that name, never spoke of her. So my nurse, Katherine, brought me up on stories of my mother’s beauty, of her graciousness, of her unyielding courtesy. According to my nurse, my mother was a sort of saint on earth, a woman who never got angry, who never spoke a harsh word, neither to man nor woman nor servant. A woman who bred quickly and died quietly, her only fault delivering my father two girls, who could inherit nothing but pain. This paragon was held up before me always, so that I, too, learned silence and stillness. I learned that quiet in a woman is prized above gold, and that obedience was not only my duty but my honor. For in obedience, I best served my father and my king. My father was tall and thin, with the face of a monk. In a better world, he would have been free to spend his life in holy contemplation, serving God. That was my father’s true gift: to sit in silence and feel the presence of God. Sometimes, when the business of state was done, and no one else had claim on his attention, he would let me sit with him in his private rooms, and kneel with him at his private altar. This altar was beside the bed of state, where my sisters and I had been conceived. My oldest sisters did not know me, for they had been married away from France long ago. They were also cursed, I was told, because they had been spawned by my father’s first wife, the wicked Queen Eleanor, the woman who had abandoned my father for a younger man years before. No one spoke of that queen except in whispers. My nurse would summon her memory when she sought to remind me to be a good girl, when she sought to turn me from wickedness. I spent my childhood in horror of that mysterious queen, a woman who was never obedient, a woman who had gone on Crusade against the infidel and ridden astride a horse like a man. I later learned that Eleanor was not dead and with the devil, but had married the King of England, who was another kind of devil, or so everyone at my father’s court said. Just before my eleventh birthday, my marriage was arranged, now that it looked certain that I would live. During this time, my father called me to him. The ladies of the court brought me into a large room made of stone. The windows far above us held clear panes of glass, and sunlight shone in through those high windows, catching the dust that danced over all our heads. The ceiling was made of a latticework of stone so delicate that it looked almost like lace. I craned my neck to look at it. My father stood with his men-at-arms and gentlemen-in-waiting beside a great wooden chair with cushions and gilded arms. I smiled when I saw my father, but he did not smile back, not because he could not see me, but because this was a solemn occasion. I did not know why I was there, but I knew that I was expected to walk to the king. For the first time in my life, I walked alone in a room full of men. The court ladies followed me a few paces behind as I moved among my father’s courtiers. When I came to the dais, which seemed to take an eternity, I curtsied to my father, then knelt before him, as if I were his vassal. There was a murmur in the room, like wind in a field of barley. Then there was silence. It had a different quality now, not one of people waiting for a task to be completed, but one of people watching a play. I must have done the right thing unprompted. Though my father wore his heaviest robes of state, trimmed in gilt and ermine, now he smiled down at me. I had never before seen him crowned. He looked like a different person, until he smiled, and I knew him again. My father raised his hands and blessed me, speaking words I no longer remember. The substance of his speech was that from that day forward I was to be known as the Countess of the Vexin. I would hold the county of the Vexin in my own right, a valuable sliver of land that lay between Paris and the great duchy of Normandy. I swore to serve my king in all things, and to serve the throne of France. When the ceremony was over, I saw a man standing behind my father’s throne. He was a small, ferret-faced man with eyes that gleamed. I was told little in my father’s court, but I knew how to listen. I knew he was one of the minions of King Henry of England. I also knew his name: Sir Reginald of Shrewsbury; even in my nursery there was talk of him when he first came to Paris as ambassador for the English king. I wondered why he had bothered to come to my investiture as countess, when even I had not been told of the proceedings until the day they were upon me. Then I heard one of my father’s women speak to another as they moved to lead me away “God help the girl,” she said. “Going to the court of that devil’s spawn.” The “devil” meant only one thing to me: the wicked queen who had been my father’s wife. I froze in midstep, the old fear of my childhood rising from the ground to grip my throat. Its bony fingers closed off my air, and I had to fight to breathe. It was not the first battle I had had with fear, and won; nor was it the last. I said a prayer to the Virgin, and She heard me, for my breathing calmed and my fear of that evil queen receded. I stood alone in my father’s court, and I knew why the ferret-faced ambassador was there. My marriage had been arranged already; I was to marry one of the devil-spawn princes, a son of my father’s former wife. I stood still as the rest of the court moved around me. I could feel the eyes of King Henry’s ambassador weighing and judging me, finding me lacking. I was small for my age, but I drew myself up straight. I would not have a servant of my husband-to-be carry tales of me, unless they were tales I placed in his hand. I did not follow the court ladies to the door, as I was meant to do. I turned back, and the women standing by did not have the sense to catch me. They thought me truly one of their dogs by that time, and did not know until too late that I had slipped the leash. My father still stood where I had left him. He sensed somehow, as I did, that more needed to be said, words that had been left unspoken. He was a good man, and a good king, but he was never one to speak before crowds. I saw that it was left to me to do it for him. I met my father’s eyes and stood before him, seeing only him, while his courtiers paused at the door. They had thought to leave, the ceremony over,but I was not done with them. Not yet. When I heard the courtiers turn back from the outer hall, I knelt slowly, solemnly, my eyes on my father’s. The room fell once more into a hush, until the only sound was the court ladies cooing like doves by the door, until the chamberlain’s harsh voice shushed them. I raised the hem of my father’s robe, and kissed it. The men around him drew back, but stayed close enough that they might watch my impromptu performance as it unfolded. I did not look at them, but only at my father’s face. In that moment, I took my true oath, one that I kept for the rest of my life. “My lord king,” I said. “It is for me to serve the throne of France. If you call on me to travel to the farthest reaches of the world, even into the outer darkness, I will go. If France needed me to marry the devil himself, I would do it. It will be my honor to marry King Henry’s son.” I did not know which hell-spawn prince I was meant for, so I did not use a given name. I knew that King Henry had so many sons, when all God had seen fit to give us was my younger brother, Philippe Auguste, the child of my father’s third wife. My father looked down at me with such pride that I thought he might weep. I saw in his face regret that he had not called me to him alone before my investiture as countess, before my marriage had been