The Silken Rose

by Carol McGrath

  After the brothers returned to Poitou, Ailenor travelled to Clarendon with her whole family including their nurses and a bevy of ladies. Clarendon was filled with activity, happy voices and pleasure. The weather was hot with endless blue skies so day after day she donned a sunhat and wore airy light silk gowns. She held courts of love, rode across meadows surrounding the castle, and enjoyed her children’s company. Edward was ten years old. He loved to ride out with the squires, jump hedgerows and hunt with his falcon, Wolf, proudly perched on his wrist.

  ‘It’s not going well in Gascony,’ Henry said in a complaining tone as they sat in the pleasure garden at Clarendon. ‘An uprising has burst out again in Bordeaux city. It’s spread into the countryside.’

  She closed her eyes. This was not good. ‘What has happened?’ she asked without opening them.

  ‘Gaston de Bearn, your own cousin, has attacked lands he claims on the border with Navarre and Gascony. The nobles are resisting to protect their castles. He is behaving like a brigand, waylaying clergy and nobles and causing terror by besieging them. Simon, after a successful ambush, has had him taken. My dear, he’s sending him to us here in Clarendon for judgement.’

  ‘You must deal with him firmly. He may be my cousin but he’s not liked by my family. I remember my mother saying he was destined to be a brigand one day.’ She pursed her lips. ‘Though I expect he’ll come here all charm, begging forgiveness.’

  ‘Simon wants me to disinherit him. I can’t do that, Ailenor. It would make it worse. He has supporters.’

  Ailenor shrugged. ‘It does seem extreme to disinherit him. He needs a firm warning.’ She was pregnant again and, happy, was prepared to be generous-hearted, even towards this Gascon rogue.

  When he appeared at their court, Henry and Ailenor both found the handsome, dark-eyed, witty Gaston charming. They enjoyed his tales of adventure. They listened to his complaints about Earl Simon. He was given a freshly painted chamber in the old palace, servants to attend his every need, and a horse to use whilst their guest or prisoner; Ailenor could not decide which. He made himself popular with Lord Edward, whom he taught to skin rabbits and to sword-fight with skill. As Lammas approached with her cousin flattering her, attending to her fluttering ladies, flirting with them all and making himself indispensable, Ailenor’s shrewd guard weakened further. She was saddened when Henry sent him home without even one charge laid before him. In September, a furious letter came from Earl Simon. Henry was storing up future trouble by releasing Gaston de Bearn.

  30

  1249 – 1250

  Nell did not come for Christmas. The season passed quietly, or would have, if Henry’s dreadful half-brothers had not arrived in England to disturb Ailenor’s peace. The year turned and Simon wrote to Henry asking for money: marauding bands of knights from Southern Gascony, led by Gaston de Bearn, are once again looking to increase their lands by war. He has not kept the peace.

  ‘They plan,’ Henry said to Ailenor as he stared at Simon’s letter, ‘to strike in large bands to burn, pillage, plunder and hold citizens to ransom. Simon wants to take even harsher measures with them.’ Henry thrust out his chest and laughed. ‘There are complaints about Simon’s ferocity.’ Henry closed the letter. ‘He brings this state of affairs on himself. He wants to strengthen castles. What is he doing with all the coin I sent him to manage affairs for us? I’m sending accountants to check up on him.’

  Ailenor closed her eyes. ‘I know about all this. You told Simon to be ruthless. We were duped by my cousin Gaston and his honeyed words. Nell is with child again.’ She sighed and opened her eyes. ‘Simon is apparently harsh with her too these days.’

  ‘Nell is not on his side?’ Henry’s eyes widened.

  ‘Is this about sides, Henry? Really? Anyway, this is different. Simon likes the Franciscans and has taken one of them on as his confessor. Nell has upset the Franciscan clergy by being outspoken to her husband, by wearing gold, pearls, and costly gowns. I doubt though she would be overly jewelled whilst carrying a child.’

  Henry laughed. ‘Some women over-reach themselves. They should support their husbands. She could sell her jewels and help her husband out of his financial difficulty and he should tame the bullying knights he speaks of with treaty, not attack.’

  Ailenor found her hand touching her jewelled hair net. ‘That’s not fair, Henry. Nell says he has borrowed from Italian bankers. You promised to pay Simon for his troops and defences.’

  ‘I hope I’m not surety for his loan this time.’ Henry’s tone was as brittle as the tree branches scratching the window panes outside their chamber. ‘There’s another matter, Ailenor.’

  She felt her eyes narrowing. It would be the Lusignan brothers again. They were still at court. Ailenor could not decide which was worse - Gascon youngbloods or the Lusignan brothers. Hugh, their father, had accompanied King Louis on Crusade and it had gone badly. News had come that Louis faced defeat and Hugh de Lusignan had died in his campaign. The boys were orphaned. Since January, Henry had been more indulgent towards them than ever. ‘Well?’ she asked.

  Henry beamed a wide grin. ‘I intend taking the Cross, in Westminster in front of the Archbishop on the sixth day of this month. I will give myself four years to plan it, by which time I shall have Church funds gathered in our coffers.’

  ‘What?’ she gasped. ‘Jesu, Henry, Louis’s Crusade has been a disaster. My sister is there with a little baby recently born in Egypt. Louis is in retreat. You want to take the Cross and become embroiled in all this? God will be happy with the new abbey at Westminster. ’

  ‘God wants his holy city returned to us.’ He shrugged. ‘Louis will recover. He captured Damietta after all, the most important city in the Principalities.’

  ‘He was routed at Mansoura. So many deaths and carnage and beheadings. Englishmen died as well as French knights. Your uncle Longespee died. Hugh Lusignan is dead. By Saint Bridget’s veil, what else can happen?’

  ‘The rout is only a setback.’ he insisted. ‘God is on Louis’s side. And the Church will pay.’

  Ailenor secretly wondered if Henry taking the Cross was another way to extract money from the clergy. She dropped her arguments, became resigned, and doubted he would ever set out. She had other battles to fight and win.

  What Ailenor dreaded came about. The Lusignans had come for Christmastide and never left. Worse, the Bishop of Winchester, who had replaced Ailenor’s Uncle Boniface when he was appointed to Canterbury as Archbishop, had died. Now Winchester was vacant again, Henry saw an opportunity to further family interests, this time using the Lusignan brothers. He appointed Aymer of Valence, his half-brother, to the See. Aymer de Valence was not even thirty years old.

  ‘He’s ignorant,’ Ailenor protested to Henry, hissing at him through her teeth whilst still kneeling after prayers in their chapel in Windsor Castle. ‘Uncle Boniface won’t like it, nor will the monks of Winchester.’

  ‘You said similar about your Uncle Boniface once and just look how successful he has been as Archbishop of Canterbury.’

  ‘It’s different,’ she retorted. ‘He, at least, was cultured when he came to us. The Winchester monks will never agree to Aymer. Uncle Boniface met Aymer at Christmas and he was shocked by his ignorance of scripture.’

  ‘I recollect a time when you said Boniface was lacking scripture.’ Henry threw the sentiment at her. She gave him a furious glare in return.

  The quarrel continued all morning with Ailenor angrily pushing Henry out of her bed, meeting him after breakfast when they finally prayed in their private chapel for guidance over Aymer’s appointment.

  Henry said at last, ‘I shall hold the See and its revenues open until the monks agree to appoint him. They’ll do as I request.’

  ‘You are favouring your relatives. It is wrong,’ she hissed into his ear.

  Henry clasped her hand so hard his knuckles were white as the bones beneath the skin. ‘As indeed I have favoured your own relatives.’ He pressed harder on her hand.

/>   ‘From what? Let go, Henry. You are going to break my hand into two.’ He loosened her fingers which she shook, looked towards the beautiful coloured window above, turned to him and said, ‘My uncles are cultured, educated, and appreciate beauty such as that window up there, filled with scripture and the music a choir has just sung in praise of our Lord. They are polite and sensitive. That is the difference.’

  ‘You would do well, Ailenor, to keep your opinions to yourself as a wife ought and focus on our daughter’s forthcoming marriage to Alexander of Scotland.’

  Ailenor swept from the chapel, leaving him kneeling in a pool of coloured light. She had not meant for the quarrel to spill over into a holy place but it had.

  She could not like Henry’s half-brothers. There had been trouble with them. The previous winter, William of Valence, Aymer’s older brother, had returned from serving as a knight with Earl Simon. He badly injured an English knight during one of the forbidden tournaments. Henry stoked the barons’ resentment by not punishing William and now he would further annoy everyone by appointing Aymer, equally unpleasant, to Winchester.

  Temporarily chastened, Ailenor decided she would think about Margaret whose marriage to Alexander of Scotland was due to take place in December. She would be aloof when William and Aymer came to court. As for Guy, she utterly detested the spiky fair-headed young man, who had appalling table manners and even worse breath. He over-imbibed. He gossiped. He spat in her presence. How could Henry tolerate them?

  Thinking about her daughter’s wedding led her to wonder what marriages Henry might consider for William and Guy. What wards were available? There were, of course, the Marshal heiresses. If William was married off to the eldest Marshal girl, he might disappear to Pembroke Castle, a good idea. What strategy might rid her of the rest? She massaged her forehead with two fingers circling them around and around. It was no good. Henry was determined and the hideous Aymer was here to stay.

  By May Day, as she’d predicted, Henry had organised a marriage for William of Valence, marrying him to Joan de Munchensi, the granddaughter of William Marshal. Joan’s grandmother had been Isobel de Clare, Countess of Pembroke, and this meant Countess Joan was the co-heiress to the Marshal estates.

  Satisfied, he said, ‘I have Alix and Mary to consider, my half-brother Hugh’s daughters. I’ll provide for them too.’ Ailenor winced when Henry reminded her of his half-nieces. More Lusignan weddings. More trouble. She remembered her father’s advice, Keep friends close but enemies closer, when Henry said, ‘You could use one as a Lady-in-Waiting until I find a suitable match for them. Mary is the younger. She’s only nine and for now will remain in Poitou. But Alix is fifteen. She is of marriageable age. I might arrange a match with Gilbert de Clare for her.’

  ‘What? He’s a child, only eight, if I remember.’ She drew breath. ‘Alix may join my ladies,’ Ailenor said, because she did not want another quarrel. ‘She can join my junior ladies.’

  Ailenor and Henry attended the magnificent wedding between the Marshal heiress Joan and his half-nephew William in Pembroke Castle. She was relieved when it was over and she could retreat to Marlborough for a month. She took Alix with her, having found the girl pleasanter than her uncles. Even so, the sooner Alix was wed, the better.

  Ailenor thought much about Rosalind whilst she was at Marlborough, recollecting the time so many years before when the embroideress had been disgraced and sent to the Priory of St Helena. It was serendipity when a letter came from Rosalind. It had been delivered to Westminster and Henry, who was embroiled in the usual ongoing discontent to do with Church matters, sent the messenger to Marlborough with Ailenor’s correspondence. She walked into the peaceful walled garden to read this rare letter privately.

  Thomas is released from Knight’s service with Earl Simon. We have returned to our manor of Midway. Who would have thought it? I am, at last, managing our estate. She wrote of her duties but she also said. I pray every day for a third child. . . Ailenor folded the letter and tucked it away into a cedar box where she stored all her correspondence. The line I miss my Westminster workshop touched her. Rosalind’s name was legendary amongst those who worked in the embroidery workshop. She still owned fame as one of London’s most accomplished embroiderers. Ailenor interlaced her fingers under her chin. Possibly, Rosalind might consider helping her with Margaret’s wedding wardrobe. She would write to her. Yes, it was time to assemble Margaret’s coffers in readiness for their journey to York in December.

  31

  1250 – 1251

  Ailenor did not want to lose Margaret to marriage, but Margaret would be a queen, and queens were God’s representatives just like kings. Margaret would be dutiful and see how important her wedding was for good relations with Scotland. Ailenor dried her tears and prepared to be firm with her daughter.

  The coming Christmas would be a happier occasion than the previous one had been. It had taken months for Ailenor to feel herself again. She had lost a baby a year earlier, just before Christmas. If losing a child had cracked open her heart, it made her even more protective of her living children - Edward, Margaret, Beatrice, and Edmund. Henry reminded her she was still young. They would have more children. She brightened as spring turned to summer. Margaret’s forthcoming wedding was a distraction from sorrow and anger at Henry’s halfbrothers’ sense of self-importance.

  That the Lusignan brood, apart from the beautiful dark-haired Alix, were away from court in Pembrokeshire with William and his new wife and, in Bishop Aymer’s case, Winchester, improved her relationship with Henry. Even so, she checked her tongue around her husband, smiled at him with serenity and never complained; sound advice from her uncles, Peter and Boniface. There were other ways to get what she desired.

  Ailenor ordered new gowns and linens for their daughter and talked with enthusiasm to Margaret about her wedding. Everyone must look extravagantly dressed if they were to impress on the Scots England’s superiority. The whole court would travel to York at Christmas. When Nell wrote from Bordeaux promising they, too, would return for Margaret’s wedding, Ailenor was delighted. It would not be the same without Nell and Simon.

  Margaret remained understandably frightened. This change to her sheltered family life was too much for the child to take in, even though she appeared to others as resilient, self-possessed and understanding of her duty. For months, Margaret had insisted, ‘Mama, I don’t want to go to a kingdom of strangers. I want us all to stay together.’ On those occasions Ailenor was at a loss how to respond and wondered if they had been too close a family. She felt deeply for Margaret’s reluctance to become a bride in a strange, wild land but forced herself to reply, ‘You are the child of the King and Queen. You shall make peace between our nations. We want this marriage and so must you.’

  ‘I do want peace but I want us to be together for ever,’ Margaret complained. ‘I liked Wilton Abbey when we visited the nuns there. Mama, I want to be an abbess.’

  ‘No, Margaret, you think that now. You are young.’ She made herself look stern. ‘Sadly, a princess must grow up. I was so happy with my mother and father of Provence, I wanted to live with them always when I was a little girl, but I came to England to marry your father. I was only two years older than you are now and I came without my parents. You, my sweeting, will travel to your wedding with us all in attendance.’ She drew Margaret into her arms, thinking what a little thing she was. She leaned her chin on her daughter’s dark head. ‘I promise you will come south again to visit often. Edinburgh is not so far distant.’ She paused, remembering the father she had never seen again and felt choked by emotion. Composing herself, she added, ‘But I could never return to Provence.’

  Margaret twisted from her mother’s embrace. Ailenor winced as her daughter reminded her, ‘Aunt Sancha is here. Grandmother Beatrice has come to England twice.’

  ‘Yes, so you see, Meg, you will see us again soon.’

  Once they returned to Windsor from Marlborough, Ailenor devoted attention to Margaret and let the ot
her children take second place. Edward found companionship riding with his cousin Harry, Uncle Richard’s son who was only a few years older than he. Edward was determined to beat Harry at swordplay and outride him, making Ailenor smile at his exploits. Six-year-old Edmund grew closer to his papa. Henry spoiled him, saw he had his favourite treat of barley sugar, and engaged with Edmund in games of merills which the boy enjoyed. Beatrice trailed around the castle after her older sister, begging scraps of material left over from Margaret’s new gowns to stitch little garments for her poppets.

  As July passed, Margaret, at last, responded to Ailenor’s attentions. She appeared almost happy. By October she seemed to have forgotten their coming parting. Ailenor relaxed as she selected jewels and garments for her daughter’s wardrobe.

  ‘Quintises.’ Ailenor lifted a length of burgundy quintise. Quintise was an imitation antique silky fabric that was soft and clinging. ‘This is what you must wear after the ceremony. Your gown will be edged with gold and pearls and stitched with roses in gold thread.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Lady Rosalind is in London. Her father is stitching your Uncle Richard’s surcoats. Why don’t we send for her and ask if she can embroider this one gown with gold thread. She might sew pearls onto the sleeves which will be long, flowing and must have scalloped edges.’ She studied Margaret’s slim, undeveloped figure. Some of her gowns must be designed to allow her to grow into them. Quintises were perfect. ‘So, my love, cloth of gold for your wedding day and quintise for afterwards. How think you, my sweet?’

  ‘I like it well, Mama. I like the way the fabric moves as you move.’ She made a small turn, pretending she was holding up the fashionable garment with her hand. She curtsied. ‘My Lord Alexander,’ she mimicked, ‘I am pleased to meet you.’ She spun around on her slippered heel to Ailenor. ‘Shall I wear it long and trailing or with a jewelled belt?’