Canterbury Papers

by Judith Koll Healey

  Your loving Mother,

  Eleanor R.

  24 mars, 1179

  To Eleanor, Queen of Castile, and dearest daughter

  From your mother, Eleanor Plantagenet

  Queen of the English and

  Duchess of the Aquitaine

  Duchess of Normandy and Countess of Anjou:

  I bring you greetings.

  I do not know if you received my earlier letters. They were taken by Maurice when Henry let him return to France. He promised me on his word he would see that they were delivered to you or destroy them. I made copies, though, for I want you someday to read my words.

  If you have received those letters, then you know the worst. Your father will have a new child by next summer, by one of the Capets. Yes, your playmate Alaïs has become your father’s new mistress. Who could have predicted that the child I nurtured in my bosom when she could scarcely walk could grow in such a short time to produce another heir for Henry?

  I am filled with anger. I suppose he coerced her. She is, I am told, his virtual prisoner. It is a calculated revenge. He told me when he placed me here, in this secured, stormy fortress so near the sea I can hear it roar on a summer’s eve, that I would pay for conspiring against him.

  He sees conspiracies at every turn. As if my friendship with Becket in exile were a conspiracy, when I simply tried to give the poor man comfort. He was, after all, in love with Henry, not myself.

  On the other hand, I have some understanding of why he made the charge that I conspired with Louis against him those years we were in Poitiers. It’s true, I did have an active correspondence with Louis, but much of it was about our daughters. You remember, both Louis’s and my daughters, Marie and Alix, were with me at court. What more natural than to strike up discussion with their father Louis on their well-being? In the course of things, perhaps, we mentioned once or twice the future of your brothers and the topic of the borders of France and England. But this was always done only out of concern for all our interests in the future of these great realms. I hope you understand. If your father pursues this course of charging me with mischief against him, who knows what punishment he will cook up for me, like a bad stew?

  You must write to him, Eleanor, and talk sense to him. He always listens to you. I am near to going mad in this fortress. I miss company. I miss the discussion of ideas. I brood and lick my wounds, like a mother wolf.

  Succor me if you can.

  Remember that I love you, and be strong.

  Eleanor R.

  14 mai, 1179

  From Eleanor, Queen of the English

  Duchess of the Aquitaine and Lady of the British Isles

  To our son, Richard Plantagenet, Prince of England

  Duke of the Aquitaine:

  I send you greetings.

  I hope this letter finds you well. I intend to send it once I can ascertain which servants I can trust. Your father replaces them as soon as they appear to show sympathy to me. He is the very devil, that man, and so is the captain of the guards here, Gérard of Blois, although he is pleasant enough to my face.

  You have by now discerned that this letter is written in the code we used to use when we wrote among ourselves in Poitiers. Little did I imagine how useful that exercise would be. It’s not a difficult code, but in fact too sophisticated for Gérard of Blois to break, God save his bones.

  Oh, yes, I have everything I need, except for intelligent conversation and friends, except for my children and servants I can trust, except for the warm, fragrant flowered air of Poitiers, and except for my freedom. And most difficult, except for my youth.

  Your father has promised me—by courier, of course, since I haven’t laid eyes on him for two years—that I may be released to keep Christmas with him this year. He has much to discuss with me, he says. I’ll wager that’s true.

  You must know by now that the Princess Alaïs is enceinte at the court at Oxford. It is rumored that your father is much concerned about the health of the princesse and the birth of the child. Well he might be, considering that her age is only sixteen summers. Although, come to think of it, I was only sixteen myself when I married Louis. Still, hardly more than a child.

  Louis will be furious when he hears. This is the child that could disrupt all his careful diplomacy. Years of planning to merge the two countries when Henry dies, with you and Philippe as joint kings, are now thrown into chaos. This child will be a child of both royal houses of France and England and, whether legitimate or not, will pose a threat to both Henry’s and Louis’s plans.

  I can’t imagine what Henry was thinking. Revenge against me, I suppose. He knew how I adored that little girl when Louis gave her to us. I was furious when I first heard news of this child, but now I feel only sadness. She is undoubtedly the latest pawn in our life’s blood feud. I don’t know if she even understands what has happened. What impact this will have on Henry’s plans I also don’t know. William Marshal was allowed to look in on me last month, ostensibly to see if I was well, and he told me that Henry is giving up plans to force the succession to John. He seems to be making peace with the idea that you are much more the king than John will ever be. I hope that is the case.

  I write to you now to encourage you to make your peace with your father. He and I are growing old. Who knows how long we will live? If he dies naming John as his heir, you will have to fight your brother for England.

  I don’t think this new babe will be a threat to you, unless you continue to provoke your father. That might be dangerous. Who knows what he will do in a fit of temper? This is the time to fold up your tents, as my grandfather William would often quote from the Arabs. The crown of England should not be lost to pique.

  I will try to find a way to send this to you. Reply only if you are certain you can trust the messenger. The one person I continue to trust is William Marshal. Although he serves the king faithfully, he still reveres me and would not break my trust. Henry knows this and allows it. Further evidence that he is growing old.

  I do not know what effect Henry’s relationship with Alaïs will have on your betrothal to her. You will have to deal carefully with him. He bellows in his rages and behaves badly, but he is wily like a fox in all his diplomacy. If I were you, I would force the marriage soon. The safest way for you to secure the throne, if their child survives, is for you and Alaïs to have a child also, this one legitimate. Do it for my sake, if for no other reason.

  Your loving mother, Eleanor

  I blanched when I came to the letter to Eleanor of Castile. I could feel the color draining from my face as I read the rest of it. But the letter to Richard undid me. I tried to assume a casual air when I tossed the letters onto the table, but any fool could see that my hand was trembling.

  William was waiting for my eyes to meet his. I could feel it, but I chose instead to look away. I stared for a long time at the letters scattered on the oak writing table. I marked how, even in the candlelight, the surface of the table was scarred and marked from long usage, as if knives had been used to write all the letters here written, rather than quills.

  “It was an ordinary code,” he said, to break the silence. Finally I looked at him. “So common, schoolchildren use it. She must have taught her own children this code for amusement. One replaces all the vowels in words with the first consonant following that vowel.” He lifted a shoulder. “If I’d had time to look at these letters before I turned them over, I could have made the translation myself. As it was, I could see even when you gave these to me those names of Eleanor’s children at the top of each. I was embarrassed when my translators called to my attention the simplicity of the device.” He spoke gently. “Did she not teach it to you also, when you were young?”

  “No, she must have used it either before or after my time with the family. I do not know the code.” I paused, and then I said, more honestly, although to say it cost me no little pain, “No, that’s not it. She taught the code to her own children in secret, but not to me. Proof again that she thought
of me as an outsider. I was Louis’s daughter, not to be trusted.” I fiddled with the tassels on my belt, looking down, although indirectness was not my usual practice.

  “I read them, of course,” he finally said.

  “So now you know.”

  “What? That there was a child between you and Henry? Of course I know. I knew at the time. Everyone north of the Mediterranean knew.” He glanced at my face. “At the time,” he added.

  My eyes flew up to him. “You say this is true?”

  He nodded.

  “Why did you ask me at Baron Roger’s manor if I knew of a royal child? Were you but playing games with me then?”

  “I wanted to see what you would tell me, how far you would trust me, what you thought others knew. I needed any information I could get to see why John was so disturbed that he would abduct you.”

  I stared at him in disbelief.

  “Princesse. Please.” William leaned forward, his head now cupped in his hand, his keen eyes boring into mine. “Did you think that this babe was some grand secret? It’s not easy to keep a baby secret, even—or especially—a royal one.”

  “Yes, you were there,” I said slowly. “I had forgotten. You were at Henry’s court at the time I was with child.”

  “Yes. I saw you growing big all that summer, despite your clever gowns.”

  “I tried to hide it.” My face grew warm.

  “I thought then the king was using you. And I knew the consequences of this baby for your betrothal to Richard.” He leaned back heavily in his chair once more, balancing it casually with his knees against the table. His arms were crossed over his chest in a martial position, reminding me of the distance between us. “I once made bold enough to address the situation with King Henry. As close as I was to him, I thought then he would kill me.”

  My eyes widened, but I said nothing.

  “He was dictating letters to me,” William continued, watching me as he told the tale. “I did all his correspondence in those years. He would trust no other. There were two guards in the room that afternoon, but at a distance from where we sat. They lounged near the door casting dice.” William looked aside as he so often did when thinking or remembering, then back again. “It was warm that day. It must have been summer. I remember that I had seen you in the courtyard that morning, with one of your women. You were large with child, and your face, your lovely young face, was marked with a rash of some sort. You looked so sad, my heart went out to you. I decided on the spot that I must try to do what I could with the king.

  “That afternoon the king called me in to dictate a letter to his captain in York. When he finished, he did not dismiss me immediately. In the pause that followed, I asked him directly if he meant to send you away now that you were with child. That perhaps he should do so, that it would be better for you and for all the court.”

  “And how did he respond?” I could scarcely push the words from my throat.

  “Hah. His arm came back across my face so quickly, and with such strength, he knocked me off my chair. Blood poured from my mouth.” William seemed to warm to his story, suddenly sitting up at the table while the front legs of his chair clattered to the floor. His long mouth pulled into a rueful smile. “He wore those damnable heavy royal rings. I had forgotten about those rings. I thought I’d lost a tooth at the least. But then I realized that the blood was coming because my teeth had clamped into my tongue.”

  “He could have killed you.” I was in wonder at what I was hearing.

  “Indeed. My face was bruised for weeks. Believe me, it was the only time I ever broached the subject with him.” He rubbed his chin as if the memory still had power. “The guards were on me in a minute. They thought from Henry’s quick move that I had threatened the king’s person. They had swords drawn, and they would have dispatched me right there, but he motioned them off, too angry to speak. You remember how it was when he took a rage; we couldn’t tell whether he was having a fit and we should call the surgeon, or whether he would rebound in a minute and strike someone dead. But after pacing once or twice, he waved me out of the room without speaking to me, and I didn’t know when—or if—I would be called to serve him again. I cooled my heels for some days in my rooms in the castle, I can tell you, expecting at any time a summons or a direction to leave the court.”

  “Were you afraid of him?” I fiddled absently with a corner of one of Eleanor’s letters. The story of William’s defending me to Henry was so peculiar, so moving, that I momentarily forgot about the translations.

  William rose and walked to the window, pulling back the tapestries that covered the opening against the night air. A full moon rising behind him threw his Gaelic profile into relief. The hair flying back off the forehead, the bony, arrogant nose, the deeply lined face looked familiar. I felt as if I had known this face in some other life, that there was a connection with this man, only just now discovered, built into my very marrow.

  “Afraid that he would harm me? Not after the first minutes. Those rages of his made him unpredictable, but you may remember he rarely killed anyone while in a rage, not anyone he truly liked. No, I wasn’t afraid that he would kill me. But I did think he might send me away.”

  “Why? Because you dared to lecture him on his duty to me?”

  That strong profile turned toward me now, and with the moonlight coming behind him, I could not read his expression. He moved slightly and leaned against the wall behind him before he answered.

  “No. Because he now knew I was aware that his heart was involved with you. And that knowledge made me dangerous.”

  “And the others? I suppose they thought I was the king’s slut.”

  “No one thought of you as a slut, Princesse. You always had too much dignity for that. But there was much shaking of heads among the king’s counselors over you … uh, always, of course, when the king was not present.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “By taking you openly as his mistress, Henry had put into risk his entire careful strategy to blend the English and French royal houses. Richard could never marry you after you were known to have a child by his father. And Philippe was going to be furious at the Plantagenets’ treatment of his royal sister, whatever happened.”

  “Ah, yes,” I murmured. “In the end it all comes down to politics among men, doesn’t it? Even wrongs done to me were important only because they disrupted the plans of men.” William said nothing. “But these letters prove that Henry achieved at least one of his goals.” I flicked my finger under the top letter and ruffled it.

  “Which was?”

  “To drive Eleanor mad. He must have seen that she got news of the child. Else how would she know? How could she have discovered it? Henry held her incommunicado in Old Sarum for nearly fifteen years. She would not have heard unless it was his intention to tell her.”

  William proceeded slowly. “Part of the game of wits between Eleanor and Henry was always who could outsmart the other. They were expert chess players. I used to watch them play when I was young, sometimes long into the evening. Henry would move one way, Eleanor another; a pawn would tumble, the bishops would be captured, the knights would leap, the castles be put in jeopardy. But almost always, on the board, the king and queen would survive. There was scarcely ever a checkmate between them. They had equal skill.” He paused. “They did the same in real life. In later years I don’t know if they could tell the difference.”

  Neither of us spoke for a time. “Are you thinking Henry deliberately used you to hurt Eleanor?” he finally asked, his voice taking on an unaccustomed gentle quality.

  I nodded, feeling a sense of defeat and a sudden urge to give way to tears. “What else should I think, reading these? He saw to it that she knew of the child. There was no need for her to know.”

  “Ah,” he said softly, moving away from the wall that had supported him. “So you think these letters tell you Henry’s motivation in getting you pregnant.” He walked back to the high chest against the wall and poured two goble
ts of wine from the decanter. In the process he glanced again at the drawings I had made earlier. He brought the goblets back, set one in front of me, and took a chair on the other side of the table.

  “Did you love him?”

  I looked up, missing a breath. “Why do you ask?” Protesting the impudence would have been useless. We had moved beyond that.

  “Because it matters now.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  He fingered the glass, then took a long draft. “Do you know what happened to your child?”

  “The child died, William.” His eyes flicked to mine at my use of his Christian name. I continued carefully, keeping all expression out of my voice. “The king came to me less than a fortnight after the babe was born. He said it had simply been too weak to survive, that the wet nurse had come to him sobbing. The child had died that morning in her arms. He said the babe was gone, that I must be strong and put it behind me.” A taste of sorrel suffused my mouth. I recalled how I had screamed and sobbed at the news, then how they had forced me to drink a sorrel-root tea to quiet me, a root so bitter I choked, drank it until I was limp with the drug. “When I came to my senses, I did as I was told. I put the memory of my child away from me. What choice had I?” I spread my hand, palm up. “Never again did I mention the child to anyone. Nor did the king, ever again, speak of it to me.”

  In a while I continued, allowing the bitterness I tasted now to run through me like a river, to warm me with its effect, like a poisonous mulled wine. “After that, the king slept in my bed no longer. I believed that it was because I had produced a sickly boy. He was no longer pleased. He began to make many trips to the far corners of his kingdom, as he had done when he was married to Eleanor, suddenly rising early and rousting his household to accompany him. Nothing planned. Nothing settled. Rarely did he even dine with me. And he made many excuses to cover it all, until finally he went back to the Continent, with orders that I should stay at Winchester. He said he would send for me, but I never saw him again.” I watched my hands clasping and unclasping on the table, as if someone else directed them. “He always made certain I was in a different castle when he came to England. Sometimes they would move me on a moment’s notice. He was finished with me.”