Roselynde, page 13
The war between needs was clear in Isobel of Clare’s face. If it was something she should not speak of, it was also something she should not hear. But it concerned William, and— “It is not my way to repeat things I am told in confidence.”
She does care for him, Alinor thought. Well then, let her stand up and demand what she desires. “It is not my way to repeat such things either, but this is something I think you have a need and a right to know. Thus, it has been upon my mind so much that my tongue wagged. William’s ribs were crushed on his way back to free the queen. He wears a brave front, but the truth is that he cannot dance or ride. He can barely walk, and it hurts him to talk much.”
“Oh, my God! What is he doing out of his bed at all?”
Never afraid to gild the lily in a good cause, Alinor replied promptly, “He comes to speak with you and, when you neglect him to dance with others, to look at you.”
Color flamed in Isobel’s face, replacing the pallor fright had given her. “That is unkind, Alinor. I did not think you would use me as Isobel does. Since William has the promise of my lands, he does not need to dance with me or talk to me any more.”
Alinor’s eyes grew large as she saw the clever way Isobel was being manipulated. First make it clear that William wanted only her estates, then tell her that the new king had not agreed to her betrothal and that she was free to choose elsewhere, then praise Baldwin and point out that he was rich already and had no need for her lands. That was a flat lie. Baldwin was richer than William, but he was also far, far more expensive in his way of life. Isobel, however, would never think of that. Still, the combination of lies with Isobel’s habit of obedience to authority would have brought her to comply with Lord Richard’s desire that his friend have use of her. Not if I can help it, Alinor thought.
“Oh, Isobel, you know that is not true. I myself have seen him trying to talk with you, and you cutting him off to dance with some silly stripling. And I have seen his eyes follow you.”
“But why did he not tell me he could not dance? Why did he not even say, ‘Stay, Isobel’?”
“Because,” Alinor said, laughing heartily as Simon’s behavior as well as William’s, became clear to her, “he is an honorable man. He did not wish to worry you or make you think him a weakling who wept over every bruise. And Isobel, I am going to speak what could bring me, and Simon, and William, too, harsh punishment—”
“Oh,” Isobel began.
This time Alinor had no intention of allowing Isobel to avoid knowledge she did not want, she hurried on, ignoring Isobel’s protest. “There is another contender for your hand, and if you do not believe, and say openly for all the Court to understand, that you are committed to William, Baldwin of Bethune will have you.” She saw from the way Isobel’s eyes slid aside that this was not news to her. “There is your second reason for William’s reserve. He is much afeared that, should he make you love him and then should the king command your obedience to take Baldwin, you would be unhappy.”
“I wish I could believe you,” Isobel cried, wringing her hands. “I wish I knew what to believe.”
“I know nothing of Baldwin of Bethune, except that Simon, who has treated me with great honor and honesty, looks aside when he speaks of Baldwin so that I should not see in his eyes what he thinks. I know William Marshal’s reputation and I know also that even those who spit when they say his name admit he is a man of honor and does not lie. You do not need to believe me. Forgo a single dance tonight and stand beside William and ask him in plain words if what I say is true.”
Then as a reward for her good deed, Alinor was summoned to the queen before she needed to listen to any more of Isobel’s waverings. Here matters went with unusual smoothness. Although Alinor was sure she would not be punished severely, she had expected a real scolding. Simon must have been unusually persuasive to convince the queen to be so mild. All she did was remind Alinor that it was she who had rejected the idea of marriage and point out the danger and foolishness of her behavior.
“You are not really foolish, Alinor,” the queen concluded. “Why have you misbehaved yourself?”
“The Devil breeds work for idle ones,” Alinor responded with a sigh. “I am sorry, Your Grace. I will amend my ways, but—but you had better send me back to Roselynde.”
“Send you back?” the queen’s voice was devoid of expression, but a variety of suspicions pricked her. The last place she would send Alinor was to her own estate. At the moment she could have murdered the girl for adding another problem to her overburdened mind. “Are my other maidens unkind to you?” she asked, choosing the least likely cause of dissatisfaction she could as a bait for Alinor to talk. Not that it was unlikely that Isobel of Gloucester and the group that licked her feet would be as nasty as possible, but the queen did not believe Alinor would care a pin for that.
“Oh no,” Alinor replied, “but you see, madam, they are really great ladies and are accustomed to being idle all day. They have ways to fill the long hours. I am accustomed to being at something from dawn to dark. At home I have maids to oversee, justice to listen to, farms and ships to inspect, accounts to keep, letters of instruction to write to my vassals. Madam, I beg your pardon for my seeming ingratitude, indeed I do, but I am being driven mad by boredom. I must have something to do.”
“My poor dear child,” the queen exclaimed, all suspicion totally swamped by a huge upsurge of sympathy. Had Queen Alinor herself not nearly become insane in those first horrible months of imprisonment? She had not been locked in a cell nor misused. She had had just about as much freedom as Alinor now had. In fact, although she had learned to fill the long hours and, in addition, developed an excellent news-gathering service, to the last day of her imprisonment, she had been racked with ennui.
“Poor child,” the queen repeated, “I had no idea you would be bored. But I cannot permit you to leave before the king comes. You must give your fealty to him directly. Moreover, I know Simon would deem it his duty to go with you and Simon must be here when Richard comes. You see, Simon served Richard as a kind of mentor—a guide and a guard—when Richard was very young, and there were sometimes differences between them because on occasion Richard is more daring than sensible. You know, for love of me Simon has not had his just desserts. It is most needful that Richard come to know Simon as a man knows a man, rather than as a boy knows a tutor, before I die.”
“Sir Simon has been kind to me,” Alinor answered quietly, dropping her eyes to hide the extreme interest she had in the queen’s last remarks. “I would not wish to interfere with his advancement, but— Well, I will try not to get into trouble.”
“You should ride out more,” the queen suggested.
“With whom?” Alinor flashed, “and for what purpose? To see the fairings? Madam, into Roselynde harbor come the great ships of all the world, even from far Cathay. I have seen the silks and tasted the spices before they came to London Market. What is there to amuse me in this?”
The sharp bitterness not only started a new upsurge of sympathy but awakened a sense of caution. Alinor would have to be kept in London, but she would have to be kept occupied. Desperately Queen Alinor asked, “Would you like to learn to read and write as I do?”
To her surprise, the girl drew herself up. “Madam, I am not a child. I have read and written since I was nine.”
“You have? I had no idea. Oh.” The queen hesitated, even more deeply disturbed, studying Alinor’s dissatisfied face.
The child was dangerous only because she was bored. Alinor could have no wide political purpose, but she might make mischief just out of desperation. It would be best for her to be directly under my eye, the queen thought. Others are deceived by that look of youthful innocence, but there is a devil of determination under it. She repressed a smile as she remembered Simon’s distress when he asked her to speak to Alinor. He thought of her as a wayward child better handled by a woman. Then she allowed the smile to flower. She would keep Alinor busy in right earnest.
“Alinor, how would you like to serve as a scribe to me?”
“Your scribe? Oh, madam, I would but—but I have no Latin. I deeply regret it but my grandmother—”
“No Latin is needed. If you write a fair hand in French, it will be sufficient.”
The plan had worked. It had worked far better than Alinor had dreamed it would. Impulsively she knelt and kissed the queen’s hand. “Madam, I thank you. I thank you, Your Grace. You have saved me from that terrible black cloud that was wrapping me round. I will serve you faithfully. Indeed, I will.”
“The labor will be long and hard. You will have no time to dally with gallants,” the queen teased.
“Pooh to gallants,” Alinor exclaimed, and then chuckled. “Nay, I will have time enough. You always come to the evening entertainments. I can make merry then.”
In fact the employment was not so easy as it sounded. For the queen to tell Alinor what to write took no long time. For Alinor to make the several copies that were needed, however, took far longer than Alinor realized it would. As she labored, she gave an apologetic thought to her own scribes, whom she had more than once reviled for dilatoriness. The letters she wrote often made up for her cramped hand and back, however. Naturally, Alinor was not employed on any state business. What she wrote were the queen’s personal letters to her daughters, to vassals’ wives, to the abbesses and abbots of religious houses. Nonetheless, all the letters contained news and, besides, nothing the queen said or did was entirely without some political purpose.
In fact, Alinor was a little surprised at some of the things the queen had her write—usually when she was abed and all the attendants had been dismissed. These tidbits seemed very private indeed and were often so short that the queen could have added them to an already written letter herself without much labor. True, they were not matters that could overset realms, but they could overset reputations and, in a few cases, alter the line of inheritance in certain families. True to her promise to herself, Alinor never breathed a hint of these tasty tidbits of information to anyone.
It was not that she was not asked. Suddenly she found herself Isobel of Gloucester’s bosom companion and a pivot around which that lady’s sycophants whirled. Alinor had too much sense to make herself important or mysterious by saying she could not tell or refusing flatly to answer the sly questions Isobel put to her. She spoke very readily of the queen’s personal account books and how carefully every pair of gloves and stockings were recorded therein. She did not fail to quote the pious passages of letters to abbesses. She was fulsomely informative about the health and welfare of the queen’s grandchildren. She talked more than Isobel herself—and said even less.
Simon saw a little too late what he had been maneuvered into arranging by being told to complain of Alinor to the queen. Walking in the walled garden, deep in the scent of lilies, which he still associated with Alinor, he had told her what he thought of her. That time they had not quarreled. While he raged, Alinor had seized one of his balled fists and kissed the clenched fingers. Like a man palsied, Simon’s voice had checked mid-word.
“I will serve the queen honestly and faithfully, Simon. I will not betray her to anyone by word or deed—only to save you or myself, and I think I need not fear that, for she loves us both and will strive only to help us. I will not even betray to you what she intends toward William Marshal, for good or ill.”
That was a beautiful touch, Alinor thought, seeing the trouble lessen in Simon’s eyes. It was perfectly safe too because Isobel had asked her questions and had some most satisfactory answers from William. Isobel would manage very well on her own, Alinor realized. She was not nearly so timid or helpless as she looked when she had a clear object to strive toward. Isobel would not openly contest the queen’s will, but she was rapidly making it impossible for anyone to believe she would marry any man except William Marshal unless she were dragged unconscious to the altar. Each night, Isobel stood beside her chosen spouse. If the queen told her to dance with another, she obeyed; as soon as the dance was over, she hurried back to William.
A week passed. In the middle of the second week of Alinor’s service, the queen informed her eldest daughter in a private postscript that they would move on August 8 to Winchester where they would await the daily expected arrival of Lord Richard. Alinor nearly choked on holding her tongue for the next two days, not only because this was far more interesting news than salacious gossip but also because she knew the queen’s habit of announcing moves only hours before leaving and letting everyone scramble to get ready. Nonetheless, Alinor refrained from warning her men or even from telling her maid to begin packing.
Her reward was not long delayed. On the third morning, when she presented herself in the queen’s bedchamber, Queen Alinor sent all away except her long-time personal servants.
“Tell me again Alinor, how old are you?”
“I am well past sixteen, madam.”
The queen smiled. “I said I knew Lord Rannulf. I am sorry I did not know him still better. I would have liked to learn how he taught you such discretion.”
“Discretion, madam? He would have laughed to hear you. He always said I had no discretion at all.”
“Yet not one word of all the news you have written for me has reached a single ear. I call that high discretion. I wish my clerks were all as trustworthy.”
“Holding my tongue was not discretion, madam,” Alinor replied laughing. “That was self-interest. I was never lacking in that. I knew if I blabbed your news, soon I would not hear it myself. I was sure you were testing me. But it can make no difference whether it is a test or not. I know that my service will end as soon as I forget my duty to be silent.”
“I am well pleased, Alinor, very well pleased. I find it most convenient to have a female scribe about me. Thus, I will ask you to change your living quarters and join my ladies. It will be a little dull for you, I am afraid, to be in the company of older ladies, but as I told you before, the bitter comes with the better. If I wish to call you in the night, you must be near.”
“Yes, madam. I will miss Isobel of Clare, but for the rest, I do not care.”
“Isobel of Clare,” the queen murmured, looking sharply at Alinor. First her lips tightened, but then she laughed aloud. “I should have known! Alinor, why did you stick your finger into Isobel’s pie?”
“Because Simon was worried about his friend William. He was not gaining strength as he should, and Simon thought it was that he was fretting over Isobel’s coldness. From what I knew of Isobel, however, it did not seem to me that she was given to playing such games. And, indeed, she is not. She is quite determined to have William. Isobel of Gloucester had been telling her nasty tales. I merely told her some true things instead.”
“What sort of tales did Isobel of Gloucester tell?”
Alinor opened her mouth eagerly, closed it, and sighed. “I will tell you, madam, but I think you should know before I speak that I do not like Isobel of Gloucester. What I say may not be just. Simon says—”
Since the queen knew the tales Isobel of Gloucester told, having been the source of them herself, she had merely been testing Alinor’s attachment for herself and was readily diverted from the subject by having heard Simon’s name three times in five minutes.
“Simon seems to have become wondrous great with you. I thought you would not welcome the interference of an overseer.”
There was that in the queen’s voice that turned Alinor cold. Sir Andre had apparently spoken the truth about the danger to them both if the queen learned she cared about Simon. Desperately she gathered her resources. The queen was far too clever to miss a lie, but perhaps the truth lacking one little piece would pass.
“Well, I do not,” Alinor admitted, “and we often quarrel quite dreadfully, but he is so much like my grandfather that I cannot help but love him.”
The word was out, but the queen’s face was unchanged. Alinor was very careful not to sigh with relief. That, her grandmother had explained, as she whipped her for telling a lie, was what gave the lie away. Courage and warmth flowed back into Alinor. She found a smile.
“And,” she continued, “he is so very often right—just like my grandfather, that I find myself asking his advice more than I would men whom I have known far longer, like Sir Andre.”
There was danger there, the queen thought—not as completely deceived as Alinor hoped—but she trusted Simon. That thought gave birth to another. She smiled at Alinor. “You were near to bursting these two days with the news of Richard’s coming, were you not?”
Alinor sighed. “I thought I had hidden it quite well.”
“You did well enough, but sometimes a tongue needs a place to vent itself like the air when a barrel is filled. You may vent your news into Simon. To tell him a secret is like casting a gold coin into a well. It is forever lost and will go no further.”
“I am glad of that, but you will have to tell him I have your permission. Else, he will not listen and he will be fit to kill me for bearing tales.”
In this case, however, there was no longer any need for a special outlet. Because the queen intended to move the whole Court to Winchester to greet the new king, she could not pick herself up and go, leaving the others to follow or not, helter-skelter, as best they could. All must be there to greet Richard and all must be in as good a humor as possible. She herself announced the move and the reason for it on the same day that she had spoken to Alinor and confirmed her service. The result was a great increase in Alinor’s status and in her freedom of movement. First of all the queen had little time for the kind of writing Alinor did. State affairs held her, readying all for Richard’s arrival. Second, the queen’s ladies were busy with overseeing the moving of the household goods. They were glad of a young pair of feet they knew to be attached to a trustworthy head to run the kind of errand that could not be entrusted to a maidservant or a page.
Alinor was most willing. The orders she gave made her known to the queen’s high-born servants, the earls and other great lords who were responsible for the household, as a person with authority and high in the favor of the queen. She tripped to and fro from the Great Hall where she reminded the Lord Steward of a particular viand that was to be stocked, as it was a great favorite of Lord Richard’s, to the Small Hall to tell the Lord Butler of a sweet wine from Spain that Lord Richard loved, to the outer buildings where she ran the Master of the Mews to earth to instruct him to bring along in particular certain gyrfalcons that had been sent as a gift from the King of Scotland.
