Alison Weir - Captive Queen

The morning brought with it a strange calm, as if she were cradled in a cocoon of peace and security from which she would emerge strengthened and ready to take on lions or wolves. The dream now seemed a distant, unreal memory, born of the fears that come by night. In the dark, everything seems more frightening, she told herself, and by and by the memory faded, until her fear had dissipated. In its place she was left with the uplifting feeling that even if her dream foreshadowed the worst, death was merely the gateway to unimaginable bliss and joy, and should be a matter for rejoicing, not sorrow.

Her calm mood persisted, even when Ranulf Glanville, his face gray, announced the arrival of Thomas Agnell, Archdeacon of Wells.

“The King has sent him to you, my lady,” he told her, his voice unusually tender.

Even before Agnell entered, she knew the tidings he had come to break to her. The dream had foretold this; that, and the fact that Henry himself had sent this man to her.

The archdeacon came in unwillingly. He was a devout and compassionate man, and his placid face was lined with distress. He bowed low, not just out of respect to one who was Queen, but with deference to one who was about to have cause to grieve. Eleanor stood to receive him, marveling that she should feel so serene. God, she believed, was succoring her, holding her in His loving hands. The thought, and the vivid memory of the dream and its promise, sustained her.

“My lady,” Agnell said quietly, “I am asked by the Lord King to inform you that your dearest son, the Young King, has departed to God.”

She had known it.

“I was prepared,” she said simply. “I had a dream.” She told him about it.

“What other meaning than eternal bliss can be ascribed to that brilliant second crown, that perfect circlet with no beginning and no end?” she asked. “What can such pure and resplendent brightness signify, if not the wonder of everlasting joy? That crown was more beautiful than anything that can manifest itself to our senses here on Earth.”

The archdeacon marveled. This was not the wicked queen to whom rumor attributed all manner of scandalous deeds, but a brave and venerable lady honed by adversity, strong in her faith. He looked on her in admiration.

“God in His goodness has vouchsafed you the tiniest glimpse of what Heaven must be,” he told her. “He was surely offering you divine comfort against your sad loss.”

Eleanor could not even think of what that loss would mean for her. The time for that, and for grieving, would come later. But she was fortified by her belief that her son was in a better place and that there was no real need to mourn him, only to await the time when she could be reunited with him in Paradise.

“I have had my epiphany,” she told Agnell. “As the Gospel says, ‘Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of Man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.’”

“My lady, I can but praise your courage in meeting this great sorrow with such staunch faith,” he replied. “I am humbled by the way you have fathomed the mystery of the dream, and by the discernment and strength with which you are bearing your son’s death. May God comfort and console you.”

“Thank you,” Eleanor said simply, suddenly feeling grief welling like an unquenchable tide within her. “I would be alone now, by your leave. Come back later. I will be ready to hear what happened to my son.”

After he was gone, the tears came flooding. Young Henry might be in Heaven, and exulting in its eternal glories, yet he was gone from her on this Earth, and never more would she see his handsome face, or hold him in her arms. Her calm had deserted her. She cursed Henry for keeping her from her son for ten wasted years. She had never seen him grown to full manhood, and now never would. And Henry had treated him so unjustly, promising him power, yet always keeping it tantalizingly out of reach. If the Young King had turned out feckless, quarrelsome, and ruthless, Henry had made him so. She could not but remember that dear little boy with the angelic golden curls, playing with his wooden horses and his toy dagger. What hopes she’d had for him! And now they were all come to dust, as was he.

Her grief went very deep. Always, she knew, she would be tortured by the memory of this beloved son.

“He had fought his father and brothers,” Agnell began. “He even shot twice at the King when the royal troops were drawn up before Limoges. He sent a messenger to apologize and explain that it had been an accident, but it was widely bruited about that he secretly lusted for his father’s death.”

Where did we fail, as parents, that our son should be driven to that? Eleanor asked herself in remorse. She closed her eyes in misery.

“The King stopped his allowance,” the archdeacon went on, “and of course the Young King ran out of money. He and Duke Geoffrey began sacking and looting monasteries and shrines, and holding villages to ransom. He became a leader of outlaws and excommunicates. I hesitate to tell you this, but only last month he and his men desecrated the holy shrine at Rocamadour and stole the altar treasure and the famous sword of Roland, as the horrified pilgrims looked on.”

She could not bear to think that her son had been such a monster. Yet if he had been past all redemption, why had God vouchsafed her that dream? Was it to show that His forgiveness was boundless? Had Young Henry truly repented at the last?

“Then the Young King’s life was suddenly cut short,” Agnell recounted. “He fell violently ill with dysentery and a fever. They carried him to a house in the town of Martel, and, he being in extremis, the Bishop of Agen was summoned hastily, to whom he made fervent confession of all his sins.”

Eleanor sent up a silent prayer of thanks.

“His case being hopeless, he asked that his father the King be summoned. But as the King told me himself, he suspected a trap, so he sent the Young King a message expressing the hope that when he had recovered, they would be reconciled. And with it he sent, as token of his forgiveness, a sapphire ring.”

Agnell’s eyes met Eleanor’s. A sapphire ring!

“I never knew Henry to wear such a ring,” she said, marveling, “yet I saw it in my dream, as clearly as I can see you now.”

“He had taken it from his treasure; it belonged to the first King Henry.”

“Truly, I am astonished,” she told her visitor. “If I had thought before that my dream was sent by God, then I am utterly convinced of it now, for how could I have known about that ring?”

“The ways of God are indeed mysterious and wonderful,” Agnell declared.

“I feel a little better now,” Eleanor said, her voice gaining strength. “I think I can bear to hear the rest.”

“There is not much more to tell, my lady. At the end, the Young King was so overcome with remorse for his sins that he asked to be clothed in a hair shirt and a crusader’s cloak, and laid on a bed of ashes on the floor, with a noose around his neck and bare stones at his feet, as became a penitent. As he lay there, his father’s ring was brought to him, and he begged that the King would show mercy to you, his mother, whom he had held so long in captivity, and he asked all his companions to plead with your lord to set you at liberty.”

His last thoughts had been for her, his mother. With his dying breath he had asked for her to be freed. Eleanor’s heart was full. She could not speak.

“He gave up his spirit later that evening,” the archdeacon concluded. “The end was very peaceful.”

“He was only twenty-eight,” Eleanor murmured, choked.

“Young in years, but full of time when measured by the experiences of his life,” Agnell observed. They were silent for a few minutes.