#alienored

Elizabeth hasn’t been sleeping. 

The evidence is painted under her eyes, pale skin decorated in purple shadows that contrast sharply with rosy skin. She cannot pinpoint why rest eludes her, why she feels so on edge in Russia. The situation here is not so different to that of the English court - she is still a displaced princess, lingering on the fringes of a dynasty she does not belong to, a laughable mimicry of her former life. 

And yet still, there is not a hair out of place, dressed meticulously in keeping with the Moscovite fashion, her attempt to both fit in and pass through this convergence of nations with as little notice as she could. Truly, she did not think that there was ever a risk of attracting attention amongst emperors and queens, but she would not tempt fate. She had long since learned that leaving things to chance was at her own detriment. 

What would Edward do? What would Richard? Even if she knew the answer, it would do her little good. She has never been as capable as either of her brothers, doesn’t have Edward’s courage or Richard’s intelligence. If she did, there would perhaps be less to fear. Perhaps she could do more than hope that sweet words and kind gestures would be enough to protect the last of the Lancasters. 

And so she does all she can do, when faced with the French woman that she is supposed to hate, simply because they were born with an ocean separating them, but cannot bring herself to, cannot find it in her heart to despise due to where they come from, is to smile at her, gently and cautiously, a proverbial olive branch stretched in the cautious expectation of antagonism, and she hopes that she will be pleasantly surprised. 

“I hope that you are adjusting to Moscow more easily than I am, your grace,” she offers, something tentative yet hopeful in her voice. “I was hoping you may join me in a walk? The weather looks finer today than it has done since I arrived here. It would be a pity to squander it.” 

Firelight dragged and glinted over Alienor’s cheek, a slash like a sunbeam across her face; her eyes, even in the dim glow of the hearth, pulsing like two clear, icy streams. They were blue, like his own, the colour of cornflowers in the July-heat; surmounted by a halo of sun-gold hair that made faint the lines of age that appeared about her eyes as they pored over a manuscript, or inspected a delicate ring at close. But, this Henry knew, an asp hissed beneath her honeyed exterior. Even as a queen-in-waiting, whose duty it was to clasp her hands, hear nothing, and heat her husband’s bed, Alienor had fortified herself with a determined directness, a polished stalwartness, that invoked the loyalty of his barons and stirred the envy of courtly belles. Her veins, after all, housed the watery blood of Virgin Mother, and her lineage – sprung from the venerable house of Poitiers, rich in silver and fecund with sons – was old, ancient. The Lancastrians appeared upstarts in comparisons; a new duchy, with little honour or pride to fall back on. Only the hope that Henry, in whose broad frame aspirations of usurping the throne had been kindled, would one day seize his rightful place among the highest of the land.

‘By my word, never,’ vowed Henry, giving a sly wink, sparing nary a thought to the fact that both the King of England and le Roi of France lacked sons – two rivals, bitter enemies, without true heirs to the throne. That, he deemed, was a rumination better suited for another day. For now, Henry eagerly embraced the indulgences of kingship, stirring the fragrant wine in his goblet with a flick of a wrist, and casting a sidelong glance at his wife, her smooth flesh buttered with pearls. As he observed Alienor’s movements, Henry arched a dark, inquisitive brow at her rise, and sudden drop, into her velvet-cushioned chair; her cheeks glowing as pink as sunrise as she jested with him. ‘If my words brought you such grievous displeasure, I warrant that you would find no trouble in kicking me, whatever afflictions may ail you. I seem to recall a night, twenty-six years hence, when the back of your hand proved a fitting tool to express your discontentment.’ He brought a hand to his cheek, as if recalling the blow, as a mischievous grin curled at his lips. ‘I never asked you to address me upon your knees again, did I? Or, at least – not in such terms.’

Leaning one shoulder against the hearth, Henry’s lips thinned in thought. ‘Must I summon you for you to appear at my side?’ He requested; his hard gaze riveted upon hers. ‘My fealty to the land is both a gift and a burden. I am unable to rest, for the thought plagues me, should I meet my demise…’ Hanging his head, recent visions of a ghastly death – swiftly dispelled by a concordat of astrologers and priests – danced before his eyes. Alienor’s words only served to darken the pall that now hung over his visage. ‘The betrothal is sealed in blood; there is nothing to be done. Were we to annul it now, it would only hasten the Yorks’ lust for the throne. A foreign prince would ignite their enmity… Nay, our hands are bound.’ At least, with his own brother away in the Holy Land, Henry could trust that it was not Stephen who would stir such mutiny. ‘I trust, madam, that I can rely upon you to present a united front on the matter, as our vows intended. Your concern is noble, but you needn’t exert yourself. We entrust our affairs to the lawyers, to the people of England, and to God. If their duty to their anointed King does not ensure their loyalty, they shall bow before the Holy Father unquestioningly’.

Swallowing another mouthful of wine, Henry deposited his chalice on the mantle and, striding toward Alienor, sank to his knee before her, a hand curving around her thigh. ‘Forgive me.’ He gently bade. ‘My words are cruelly spoken. I would go to any length to ensure our children’s safety. Though the cost is great, I see in them your goodness, your fortitude. Will you not stand with me, wife? Stand with your King?’

The scarred flesh that roped across his countenance had long ceased to rankle, ridged and weathered although it appeared. Pricked by torchlight, and warmed by the tender slant of the Queen’s lips, Henry gladly received Alienòr’s embossing of wifely devotion to the cheek. He cast his gaze downward, turquoise eyes swimming in the dewy, half-melted gleam of rich tapers, amused by her remark. ‘But no one,’ sparred the King, absently drumming his fingers against the oak, glowing smoothly under his palm, ‘is as susceptible to women’s virtues than the current King.’ A snigger resonated within his chest; his chin rose to meet Alienòr’s trained gaze with a wry leer of his own. ‘Virtue, or its absence, shall we say?’ He cut her gaze with a sardonic grin, wavering between prosaic taunts and jovial repartee. In his thirst for opulence and finery, King Henry was more Frankish than otherwise – but in marrow and sinew he was formed from all the ascetic saints of England, who instilled in their scion a smarting repugnance for the French. This ancient discord had been fecundated by the Queen’s own quarrels with the late King, latched at Aquitaine’s bosom of wealth like a babe at its mother’s bitter teat.

‘In looks and in mannerism, I see.’ Henry’s dark brows made for his forehead, as raven-black as the tresses that spilled from the eldest Plantagenet’s milky crown. Katherine, his heiress; for all her fortitude, her steely, benign placidity, it at times deeply moved Henry to think that she was no longer the child, the nestling, weaving in and out of his legs, leaving no stone unturned in her boundless curiosity. Wiping the spectre of reminiscence from his countenance  Henry remarked: ‘that her blood is Plantagenet is doubtless. Her maternity, on the other hand…’  

He observed, with one brow arched haughtily over his eyes, as Alienòr’s deft, tapering fingers swiped his goblet from the table. Predictably, her mouth soured and curled with distaste at the bitter brew that lapped at her tongue. The King resisted a chuckle as she returned the drink to his keep. ‘Is my countenance so visibly infected with thought?’ He gently bade. The Queen’s mask of youth had fared far better than his –– as so, it seemed, did her poker face. Henry was, like most sovereigns assembled in Paris, allowing himself to be impressed by the worthy atmosphere of mirth and elation, seduced into pleasing snares and games of diplomacy held beneath canopies of gold and concord; but matters at home, as always, weighed ineluctably on the spirit. Woes that, in the present climate, denuded themselves like a serpent bathing on the Roman-tiled squares of the Hôtel Saint-Pol.

The King rose to his feet, ambling toward the smorgasbord to replenish his wife’s goblet. ‘It would seem –– I am as surprised as you –– that you mistook my cup as your own.’ He made to hand Alienòr her cup but not, without, ducking his head low to stamp his mouth against the golden part of her scalp; only with this benediction bestowed did he pass the cup into her hand, the sapphires worn on their fingers interlocked; the intimate transaction complete. ‘Whatever infects my mood, it is nothing that needs trouble my lady wife. You are the milk and honey of the summit, my disquiet is unworthy.’

The Holy See professes that fasting and abstinence purifies the soul, makes lusty men even more saintly in the eyes of God, but tonight the provisions are ample. Cloudy-eyed servants, draped in gossamer wimples, dip in and out of the King’s chambers to deliver bowls upon bowls of victuals, joints of hearty bore, bread pregnant with precious oils, goblets of blessedly unwatered wine, picked from the French King’s own vineyards. In the cold, damp streets below, a cacophony of chatter flares up, ladies cluck in the mizzled nightfall, and bishops hum out their sonorous chants, swinging flaming incense about, sanctifying the palace with rich, earthen smells (for God is displeased by foul odours, though not, evidently, by indulgence). 

Henry Plantagenet’s heavy hand looms over the oak table, its blackened grooves and splintered contours hacked from an ancient log.  His ruby heirloom clinks against the wood, appearing molten in the hearth’s amber glow. The table has been cleared of food, but wine and ale flows in abundance; Gascon, German, Italian, corked in better times. None, of course, English –– that sweet, viscid nectar of the marshy moorlands, where Brutus trampled over thistles, where dragons belched out flames  –– though this is a sin Henry readily forgives. 

The King quaffs another swig, his countenance immovable with thought.

Though a tempestuous channel now separates him from that misty isle, his kingdom lingers upon the conscience; a court of hawks and eagles, unwilling exiles and conquerors, unrest rumbling out from the Council of the North, sickness leaching in from Ludlow. An image of his boy, now twelve years in the grave, with the soapy scent of youth still upon him, beckons. The English retinue, with so many and such lively princesses, had dazzled the Parisian convocation. Their pious King; their holy, freely-moving Queen. But it would not take more than a hard glance to peer past the plastered exterior, and into the moulting, crumbling centre of their primaeval keep.

Henry’s thoughts, to whatever acidic depths they might have descended and fizzled like an old coin, are snared in the net of Aliénor’s emerging presence, dispatching from the long, yellowed shadows of the evening; a radiant, golden beacon, her long throat nuzzled by the soft grey plumes bunched about her shoulders, her freshly plaited hair tapering down her spine. She is not dressed for a reception in the Great Hall, splashed with pearls, bedecked with the richest of English jewels; but brought low to the role of a wife, a maiden, her body sculpted, softened with tokens of childbearing –– all of it the more pleasing to the husband who’d warmed her lovely bed, these twenty years.