The Autumn Throne (67 page)

Alienor was vaguely aware of people entering the room. Her chaplain, she thought, and the Abbess; she recognised their voices. Outside the children continued to squeal and play, but it was a distant and fading sound. Others had entered the room; she could sense them even though she could not open her eyes, and she felt their presence as a shiver through her body for they were not of the fleshly world, although they had been once.

Her hearing strengthened and Richenza’s voice soared.

The song was overlaid by the hoarse cry of a gyrfalcon, and although her eyes were closed she could see Snowit dancing
on her perch, secured by the leather leashes tied around her slender legs. She spread her pinions in a white fan and flapped and bated.

‘Set her free,’ Alienor entreated, but could not tell if she had spoken aloud or not. If she had, then no one had heard her, for the gyrfalcon continued to beat her wings and fight the leashes.

Someone pressed a cross into Alienor’s hand and there were whispers of concern like the rustle of dry, dead leaves.

She struggled to leave her bed and release the falcon herself because she could not bear it. Where was her stick? Why couldn’t she move?

She became aware of a girl at the bedside, a young woman clad in a gown of ivory-coloured silk damask patterned with gold, her warm tawny hair decorated with jewels. Alienor thought that she had once owned a dress like that. The girl smiled at her, and her eyes were as blue as the sea in the bay at Talmont. Alienor felt her joy, the vibrant life pouring through her lithe body. The girl turned away in a shimmer of hair and jewels, and took the falcon onto her wrist. Her hands were long and fine, young and smooth. She bore the gyrfalcon to the window, unnoticed by the crowd gathered around the bed. Drawing up her skirt to show a froth of pale silk under-gown, she stepped up onto the window seat, light in her kidskin slippers, and leaned forward to the open casement. She looked briefly over her shoulder at the bed, at the people leaning over the wizened shell lying upon it, and then with a smile on her lips and a wide sweep of her arm that floated her sleeve she sent the gyrfalcon soaring free into the blue.

Watching her fly, Alienor felt utter joy in her heart, and the sensation expanded outwards until she was one with the girl and the bird. High above the abbey, spiralling inside the light. Prisms of colour like the rainbow refractions in the rock crystal vase she had once given her first husband as a wedding gift splintered and came together, and expanded again. She saw others in the lambency, welcoming, reaching out to
embrace her, and as she opened herself to their love she became one with them within infinite coils of light in a never-ending labyrinth where all was as one.

A
year later, Richenza stood before her grandmother’s graceful, enigmatic tomb in the abbey choir. The effigy had been completed in the winter following Alienor’s death, a different sculptor having added the fine details to her figure. Although it had been a necessity owing to Master D’Ortiz’s demise, the subtle difference of style caused Alienor to stand out from the others and seem more active in the hint of movement over the knee draped in its blue cloak and the way the hands were raised to support her book.

The sun streamed through the church windows and picked out the rich colours of the garments. Alienor’s jewelled crown shone with points of reflected light. She wore a pale dress with a lozenge pattern picked out in green and red. The effect drew the eye to her first, even if Henry had been intended as the leading figure. It seemed that her effigy glowed with life. While Richenza’s grandfather and uncle lay in deep slumber, Alienor was awake. Joanna’s representation, kneeling at her father’s feet in prayer, was lifelike too. The women were active, the men passive, and that made Richenza smile as she absorbed wisdom in that moment. Her grandmother had often been told she did not know her place, but truly she did.

‘God grant you peace in heaven, Grandmère,’ Richenza whispered. ‘May you have been reunited with those you loved in your life.’ She kissed the cool stone cheek of the effigy, did the same to Henry, Richard and Joanna, and went outside to join her waiting entourage. The chess board was gathering for momentous moves. Alienor might be gone but others had
taken her place and in their turn were engaged in playing the great game.

All around her the April spring was flourishing. The cherry blossom had blown from the trees, leaving the new green fruit to set. Richenza had no tears today. She had shed and dried them many months ago, and although she mourned, she was coming to terms with her loss. ‘There will never be another such as you,’ she said softly, with a look over her shoulder, ‘but you will be remembered for as long as memory endures.’

She mounted her horse and, leaning down to her falconer, received Snowit onto her gloved wrist. The gyrfalcon uttered a single piercing cry, bated her speckled wings, and then settled.

With Fontevraud’s pale abbey buildings behind her, Richenza took the road north towards Paris and Blanca.

Writing
three novels about Eleanor of Aquitaine – Alienor as she was known in her own lifetime – has been a wonderful and enlightening journey for me. I have learned so much along the way and at the same time discarded a great deal of what I thought I knew.

The Autumn Throne
covers the thirty years of Alienor’s life between her imprisonment at what is now Old Sarum (the original Salisbury) by her second husband Henry II and her death at the Abbey of Fontevraud in April 1204.

It is often said that she was incarcerated at Sarum from 1174 to Henry II’s death in 1189, but while she did indeed spend many years there, she was at times held under house arrest at castles including Winchester, Berkhamsted and Dover. She also visited Normandy to attend family gatherings and rubber-stamp (so to speak) Henry’s policies.

At one point in the early period of Alienor’s imprisonment Henry actively considered annulling their marriage and consigning Alienor to a nunnery. It is interesting that around that time the Abbey of Amesbury became an English colony of Fontevraud. Did Henry have Alienor in mind as a putative abbess while still confining her to his island kingdom? Perhaps.

From being set free following Henry’s death in 1189 to her own death in 1204, Alienor scarcely had a moment to draw breath as she was hurled into the thick of diplomacy and government. As well as governing England, she crossed the Alps in midwinter to bring Berenguela of Navarre (also known as Berengaria) as a bride to Richard the Lionheart in Sicily. After
a respite of only three days she had to set out for home via the papal court in Rome to sort out problems caused not least by her youngest son John.

Following Richard’s imprisonment by Emperor Heinrich of Germany she made immense efforts to raise his ransom and then rode to bring him home. The letter in
chapter 35
with Peter of Blois where Alienor writes to Pope Celestine castigating him for his passive response in the face of her desperation comes from her actual correspondence. All I have done is condense it slightly. Richard really did have his armour returned to England to be put on show as a fund raiser, and he also composed while in prison, the beautiful, sad song I mentioned. It still exists today. If you search the internet for ‘Ja Nus Hons Pris’ you should be able to find several versions.

Alienor’s retirement to Fontevraud in 1194 was interrupted when Richard was struck by a crossbow bolt in the Limousin and died after the wound festered. While researching I discovered that a few years earlier he had taken a hit from a crossbow to one of his legs. Clearly he was an insurance risk in that department! Arriving at his deathbed Alienor had no time to grieve but immediately had to throw her efforts into supporting her remaining son John as he inherited the vast but splintering Angevin empire. As well as Richard’s death she had to cope with the loss of her daughter Joanna in childbirth. We don’t know the difficulty that caused Joanna’s death, but whatever it was she had time to make her will and gain permissions from the Church to take her vows. I have gone with placenta praevia – a complication of late pregnancy whereby a low-lying placenta, depending on its position, can prove fatal for mother and child.

Having buried Richard, the ‘light of her life’, at Fontevraud and Joanna too, Alienor had to cross the Pyrenees in winter, now aged around seventy-six, in order to bring one of her granddaughters from Castile back to France as a bride for the Dauphin Louis. The expectation was that Urraca, the oldest, would be chosen, but Alienor preferred the younger one, Blanca.
The latter, renamed Blanche, was to become a formidable Queen of France and rule as regent during her son’s minority and later during his absence on crusade. She was certainly cast in the mould of her famous grandmother.

On returning from Castile Alienor retired once more, but during the strife between her remaining son John and her grandson Arthur, posthumous heir of her son Geoffrey, she found herself being besieged by the youth at her castle of Mirebeau. She was rescued in the nick of time by John, who was around ninety miles away but covered the distance at such speed that he surprised the besiegers as they were breaking their fast on roast pigeon, and turned the tables on his nephew – who was to die at his hands in suspicious circumstances the following year.

Alienor returned to Fontevraud to live out her days. Some sources say she took the veil before she died; others make no mention of it. I have chosen not to portray her becoming a nun at the end of her life as I don’t feel personally she would have done so.

It is thought that Alienor was responsible in part for designing her own effigy and those of Henry II, Richard and her daughter Joanna (the latter has been lost). Alienor is depicted reading a book and is thus more active than her menfolk who are lying passively in state clutching their rods of office. It may be that she is reading aloud to them for their edification from what is highly likely to have been a book of a religious nature. Reading aloud was the usual mode of medieval reading, rather than silently as we do now, and means that for once they have to listen to her!

I noticed when researching the effigies that Henry II lacks a beard. There are a couple of portrayals of him in life and on both those occasions he is bearded. Richard the Lionheart is certainly bearded on his effigy. Did Alienor want to portray Henry as the handsome young man she had married, who might not have been hirsute at the outset? Or perhaps she wanted Richard to have a greater authority than his father. In
the medieval period, a beard was equated with gravitas. I do not suppose we shall ever know.

The debate about whether or not Richard the Lionheart was homosexual is still strongly argued and everyone has an opinion. I have left mine open in
The Autumn Throne
. From this far a distance we don’t know, and in truth it doesn’t really matter. Philippe of France and Richard are reported as having shared the same bed but that wasn’t unusual in the medieval period and was a sign of trust and prestige between high-status individuals. It’s our modern mindset that has imbued it with homosexual connotations. However, I did use the bed-sharing detail to put forward a different theory. Richard is reported to have been a debaucher of women and to have behaved with lustful depravity – sufficiently for him to have performed public penance for his deeds. A ménage à trois would fit neatly into this. Richard is reported as having a son, Philippe of Cognac, but he disappeared from the scene soon after John came to the throne. John is recorded as paying him a single mark in documentation, so obviously was not about to cultivate him and never acknowledged him as his nephew – although given John’s track record with nephews, perhaps one should be suspicious.

On the subject of names, I called Geoffrey’s spaniel Moysi. It means ‘Mosaic’ in Anglo-Norman and I envisaged his coat as being mottled.

Alienor’s gyrfalcon is called Snowit. I had to use this name somewhere in the novel. One day while browsing a legal document of circa 1200 I came across a lady called Snowit, which today we would translate as ‘Snow-White’. I had always thought the name an invention of the Brothers Grimm, but no, she had once been a living woman, dwelling in Middlesex, the wife of William le Parmentier. At times like this I love the research!

Alienor’s granddaughter Richenza changed her name to Matilda when she returned to the Angevin court. Frequently women did change their names when they married; she is not the only example. Henry I’s queen changed her name from
Edith to Matilda, and of course another of Alienor’s granddaughters became Blanche instead of Blanca when she married Louis, heir to the French throne. I made the decision to remain with Richenza to avoid a confusion of Matildas.