Abbey of St. Agnes, Bath May 1178 I became myself again, living the next five years among the nuns of St. Agnes. Mother Sebastian welcomed me back with open arms. I wondered at first if she had not heard of my affair with the king and of all that followed. But when we prayed together alone in my room, in front of the prie-dieu that they had built for me so long ago, she commended the soul of my daughter to heaven. I knew then that she had heard the whole story of my time with the king. I prayed for Marie Helene, safely married to Charles of Anjou at the queen’s bidding. I prayed also for Bijou, though she was only a dog. Marie Helene had taken my puppy away with her when she went by ship to meet her husband. Even I could keep no dogs in the nunnery. I prayed for Henry and for Richard, the men I would always love, the men I could not keep. And always, I prayed for Eleanor. I took to painting again almost as if I had not left it. I found myself fascinated with the Birth of the Holy Child, and I would paint nothing else. I worked with deep colors, leaving the dark tones of the vellum to stand in place for the skin of Our Lord. I painted Him always in the manger, surrounded by His Mother and singing angels, His limbs swaddled and His mouth smiling. Always, when I was done, the Christ Child wore her face. These little vellum paintings became valued by the sisters as objects of devotion, and in the last year there had been a call for them even out in the world. The wealthy women of the county would come by litter in person to take one of my paintings from the convent, leaving a healthy gift of gold or silver in its place. The Mother said that these paintings caught something of the joy as well as the sorrow in the birth of Our Lord. She said also that I was not the only woman ever to lose a child. I was old enough by then to understand her. I sat in the garden on a beautiful spring day, five years after my daughter had been born and died. I wore a simple black gown and veil. My hair had grown back long past my shoulders. The sun was high and warm, and I worked with my paints laid in the shade so that they would not dry out. I had brought my high table into the yard, as no one else would have been allowed to do. Though I lived among the sisters, I was not one of them. I added the smallest touch of blue to the Christ Child’s eye where He looked out from my painting, smiling as Rose had smiled at me. I laid my brush down and looked at the face of my daughter where I had painted her on the vellum. It was intended for a squire’s wife down the road in Bath, and her retinue was coming for it on the morrow. As I sat among the flowers of the simples garden, Richard came to me. He had met with my father the year before at Rouen. He had stood as witness to the lie Henry swore was truth: that Henry had never touched me. My father and King Henry had confirmed my betrothal to Richard once more. I wondered now, and not for the first time, what Richard thought of this, of the whole world pushing me into his arms, when all but my father knew I had been the king’s mistress. Richard was as tall and straight as I had ever seen him, and it seemed that his shoulders were even wider than I remembered. His red hair was touched with gold in the sunlight. I had forgotten how beautiful he was. He seemed older than his twenty-one years. I knew that he still bore the burden of his father’s enmity, and the loss of his mother. Just weeks after I had last seen her, Eleanor had led her sons in a rebellion against their father, a war that even I, as close as we had been, could not have foreseen. Even Henry had been caught unaware, but he had known, as I did, that his sons would never have united against him without Eleanor urging them to it. The rebellion had ended with each of Henry’s sons falling one by one, as pawns on a chessboard, to Henry’s superior strength. Henry had forgiven each of them, going so far as to offer them additional incomes and castles on the lands they held by title only. But Henry, being Henry, gave up none of his political power. Just as he had been unable and unwilling to have a partnership with me or with Eleanor before me, Henry would brook no half measures with his sons. Though all three held title to their duchies, both by right of birth and by oath to their overlord, the King of France, Henry conceded nothing. Then, as always, Henry held his power close. I wondered if he found his power cold comfort, as my prayers were cold comfort for me. Despite his largesse to his sons, Henry had not forgiven Eleanor. As the architect of the rebellion, as the mind who had united her sons against their father, Eleanor had been locked away. I did not stand to greet Richard as I once would have done. I shaded my eyes from the sun with one gloved hand and smiled. “Well met, my lord prince. You are welcome to this place.” There was a stone bench near my high table, and he sat down on it. “That is beautiful,” Richard said. “Thank you. Painting soothes me as nothing else can.” His hair was longer, and reached his shoulders. This lion’s mane suited him, and brought out the electric blue of his eyes. “I have come to say that I am sorry.” I came down from my stool and sat beside him. Though it was no longer my right, I reached out and took his hand in mine. Richard’s hand was large, with long fingers and blunt-cut nails. The calluses rose on his palm where his sword bit into it, and made it stronger. “I am sorry for your loss, though I know it is years past,” he said. “I am sorry I could not come to you sooner.” “You are here now,” I said. We sat for a long time, his hand in mine. “Eleanor is still locked away at Sarum?” I asked, hoping perhaps she had been set free, and I simply had not heard of it. I knew that Henry would never let me go, but I prayed always that for Eleanor’s sake he would relent. Confinement would prey on her much more than it did on me. “She is at Winchester now. It is better for her there, but still, she is not free.” His face was closed to me, as it sometimes was when he spoke of her. “I am sorry to hear it. I pray for her always.” “And will you pray for me, Alais?” For a moment, it was as if we were back in the kitchen garden at Windsor Castle. I could see his sword, driven into the ground at my feet, his blue eyes staring up at me, full of a love that neither of us would ever lay down completely. “I always pray for you, Richard. You will have my prayers with you until the day I die.” He looked away from me, and I knew that he swallowed his tears. But then he smiled, and it was as if a second sun came out to warm the garden. He spoke then of the reason he had come to me. “Mother sends her love.” Richard swallowed hard, as if suddenly shy, and met my eyes. “She reminded me of the conversation we had at Windsor, just before I was forced to leave. You saved me that day. I have never forgotten it.” “Richard, I did what I had to do.”
“No,” he said. “You did much more.” Richard stood, and drew me to my feet. “I tell you now that I have forgotten no vow that lies between us.” I saw his love for me in his eyes, undimmed by the evil I had done. “I will love you, no matter how long you sit alone in this house of God. When my father is dead, I will come and fetch you out.” I heard his words imply all he could not say. He would one day marry me, even though I had spurned him, even though I had borne his father a child. Our love still lived, untouched by politics and loss. I saw that it always would, no matter what might come to tarnish it. Our love would gleam bright again, once we lifted our hands to polish it. Never had I hoped for such a reprieve. When I was released from the prison of my nunnery, Richard would come for me. He would honor our betrothal, not for politics or for the power my father’s lands might bring him, but for me. I pressed my lips to his cheek, taking in the sun-warmed scent of his skin. His arms came around me, and drew me to him. For a long moment we did not speak, cherishing the revived possibilities between us. I knew that he would not be faithful, as no man was. But I knew he loved me. I knew that I loved him. We could start again, and make a true marriage, with nothing else to come between us. Richard spoke finally, and his voice was hoarse with his longing for me. His grip loosened, and I stepped back, so that I might once more see his face. “Mother is allowed no letters, but she instructed me to give you this message. She will bless our union. Nothing will give her more joy” He reached into the pouch at his belt, and drew out a red rose with a shortened stem, a rose that bore no thorns. “The queen asks that I give you this, that you may not forget her, and her pledge.” I took the flower he offered me, its petals like velvet on my fingertips. It was a Persian rose, one of the strain Eleanor had brought back from the Levant years ago, when she was still married to my father. Richard drew me close and I felt his lips on my hair. “The king will not let me come again, I think, not for a very long time. Remember what I have said to you.” “I will remember.” I could feel his reluctance to leave me, but his arms fell away. He strode away from me, as if afraid what he might do were he to linger. Richard turned back once at the gate, raised his hand, and smiled at me. I saw his red hair shining in the sun. When the day came for us to be married, I wondered if our children would wear his hair or mine. I saw Eleanor in his smile for the first time in that sun-warmed garden. I had never noticed before how his slanted eyes were so like hers. We would all be together again. Eleanor had said so; she had foreseen it. Now so could I. Richard left me then, but his presence lingered, and that of Eleanor. I felt them with me as I stood alone in that garden, holding the rose Eleanor had sent me. I would have to give up the painting of my daughter’s face on the morrow. But I did not need a painting to remind me of Rose, and of all she meant to me. Tomorrow, I would start a new painting, and this one, I would keep. Mother Sebastian came to me then, bringing lay sisters with her to clean up my painting things, and to take me into the chapel for prayers. I was glad to go. I was certain now that, one day, I would be free. I would enter the world once more, a woman of strength and power, as Eleanor had raised me to be.