Gifts of the Queen Read Free Page A

those civil wars I have spoken of, had fallen on us in all their fury. Not one part of England had been free of them, not my lands at Cambray, nor Raoul's at Sedgemont. And Raoul, who had sworn to support one claimant to the throne, who had fought loyally to the end for King Stephen, not even Raoul had escaped the enmity of that other claimant, Henry of Anjou, who on Stephen's death, had at last gained his heart's desire and been crowned king himself.
    What put it in my mind this last day of our journey south, the thirty-eighth day (I know, I had kept count, scratching each morning a fresh mark on the saddle flap), what made me think now of the lady of the moors? More than ten years had passed since she had appeared to me, and I had hidden memory of her as a dream is hidden, so deeply buried I had never thought of her again, as if grief and death had supplanted her. And yet I had never forgotten her either, and on remembering I must remember the occasion complete, the cold wind, the smell of peat, the chink of bridle chain, the rivulets of mist. Who knows what God puts into our minds to make us recall this thing, then that. We are but part of a vast plan whose beginning and end are never known. I can tell you only that now we were riding along the river's bank toward Sieux and all the mist of the spring evening curled about our horses' feet. We splashed through the reed beds, startling flocks of geese and ducks that broke away across the wide expanse of open water where the river had widened into a lake. A month or more had we been already on our journey here, a long hard month since we had set sail from the little southern English port and crossed the sea and come to France; more than a month since I had been wed at the court of this new English king, Henry, second of his name. More than a month since my new husband, Lord Raoul, Earl of Sedgemont, Count of Sieux, had brought me here to France, to his own lands now restored to him.
    I looked ahead of me where Lord Raoul rode. Only a few knights accompanied us, on this our last day's journey south to Sieux. From time to time, Raoul turned painfully, for riding was not easy for him these days, and looked back where I, my two squires, and a rear guard rode in single file. He was simply dressed, this great lord, no sign of rank, a leather jerkin, no rich rings, no golden chains, no furs. His hair, silver-gold, grown longer on our journey here, tossed freely in the wind. And his right arm, sword arm, wounded arm, was still strapped tightly to his side. But when he smiled as he now did, his eyes of Norman gray turned blue-green like the sea, and the laugh lines fanned out. God knows that he was tired and thin, but he did not look so fine-drawn, if I can use that expression for a man so full of energy, as on his wedding day when he had outfaced King Henry in his court. You would not know, on looking at him today, what cruel wrongs had been done to him.
    For Henry hated Raoul, a hatred that went back even to their forefathers' time, a hatred so strong that even before Henry had been crowned king, he had seized Raoul's lands in France and occupied that castle of Sieux, toward which we now were riding. Worse, on succeeding to the throne, Henry had seized Raoul's English lands as well, had openly proclaimed Raoul an outlaw, and had named him a traitor whose lands and titles and life were forfeit. The story of that time has been already told. Wounded in a last great fight with one of Henry's men, Raoul had been rescued and hidden by the Sedgemont guard who, for love of their overlord, went willing into exile with him. These same men rode with us today. Well did they deserve to rest this night. And the story too has been told how I, as Lord Raoul's ward, had come to London to find the king and plead with him for Raoul's life, and how, alone, friendless, I had been befriended by Queen Eleanor. She it was who in the end had persuaded