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