The Courier

Lady Eleanor was my stepmother, and the dearest friend of my childhood. To everyone else she was Queen Eleanor of England, or the Duchess of Aquitaine, or "Your Highness." To me she was simply the Lady Eleanor.

Our long and complicated history had many bends in the road, and our early intimacy had long since disappeared from view. Even so, it was hard to imagine that she meant me bodily harm. But there was no doubt in my mind that my current situation could be traced directly to the letter Queen Eleanor had sent to my brother's Paris court not a fortnight earlier.

Philippe and I were closeted together when her letter arrived. We were in his private chambers in our drafty palace on the Île de la Cité, perched on the edge of the wind-whipped Seine, when the courier found us. We were alone, without guards or servants, as was usual when he wished to badger me about some inadequacy of my performance as princess royal.

"Alaïs," I recall him saying, "I have hesitated to speak to you about this, but your behavior is becoming more and more a daily topic of discussion for the court."

With hands clasped behind his back, he paced away from me as he talked, so that his words at the end became muffled as if flung against the wind. I sighed.

The chamber suited Philippe. His passion was war, always had been. The tapestries that lined the high stone walls and provided some measure of warmth were laced with hunting scenes -- men with spears, boars in flight, hounds leaping. Hunting is, after all, a form of war; at least I would think so if I were an animal. The doors that guarded the privacy of the chamber were of oak and carved with scenes from the ancient battle of Troy. Encircling the hearth was another remarkable piece of oak carved by highly skilled artisans. They had used their art to design miniature weapons -- bows, arrows, knives, swords -- all intertwined like a chain of malicious grapes winding around the gentle hearth fire.

"Well, what do you have to say, sister?" He turned unexpectedly and headed back in my direction. I forced my attention to the issue.

"I cannot understand, brother, why the court should gossip about me in this way. Unless it is that your courtiers are envious of my serenity in the midst of the tremendous chaos that reigns over this impending wedding."

"They say not that you are serene." Philippe's toe stubbed on a corner of one of the Smyrna carpets of which he was so proud. He cursed softly as he caught himself. At such vulnerable moments, he was not the king of France to me. I saw him only as my younger brother.

"The reports are the reverse, that your feeling about this wedding runs high. The charge is that you refuse to take part in the preparations, or even give advice when it is sought, but instead become angry when Agnès or her ladies try to involve you in their plans." He began to rub his brow, always a sign that his headaches were returning, then covered the gesture by running his fingers through his dark, cropped hair. "Alaïs, this is becoming an issue between Agnès and my royal self. She feels you are not supportive of this coming wedding between our son and the house of the Plantagenet."

I held back yet another sigh. Philippe felt caught; I could see it in his face. I knew he did not want to have this conversation with me, that Agnès had forced it on him. We cared for each other, and he mostly left me alone to brood in my own way or withdraw if it suited me. For all his faults, he was my brother. I sometimes saw in his face the broader outlines of my own as it played back to me from the metal mirror he himself had brought me from the south. We had different mothers, but the lines and shapes of our faces, long and thin, were of the father we shared, and we had the same slightly almond-shaped eyes, those eyes of the Capet house of France. His were dark, while I had been told mine were as green as the eyes of my black cat.

"Philippe, try to understand my position." I shifted on the cushions to lean forward and made a gesture of appeal with my good hand. "I don't like weddings. I don't want any part of them. I am delighted that you have arranged this marriage between little Louis and Eleanor's granddaughter." I smiled but then spoiled it by muttering, "Although why Eleanor of Castile would want to send the child Blanche from sunny Spain north to the damp fog of Paris is beyond me."

Philippe stopped in front of the small couch on which I had draped myself. "That is exactly the kind of comment that -- "

"-- that gets me in trouble in this court of yours," I finished for him. It was so easy to finish his remarks, because, on some subjects, they were so predictable.

"It's your court as well, Alaïs," he said, sounding wounded.

"No, it 's not, Philippe. Let's not --- at least between us when we are alone -- keep up that fiction. I am here at your sufferance. I was sent back here like an unwanted package when my betrothal to Richard ended and Queen Eleanor found me an embarrassment. You are kind, but I am of an age where I should have my own home and county, and a husband of my own. I don't, and so I find myself your guest." I tried to speak in a matter-of-fact manner but found my voice oddly giving way to some kind of shakiness as I finished. So I stopped talking until I had more possession of myself.

Excerpted from The Canterbury Papers © Copyright 2012 by Judith Healey. Reprinted with permission by Perennial. All rights reserved.