The Autumn Throne Read Free

her face daintily on her sleeve lining.
    ‘Your heart is too tender,’ Alienor scolded. ‘That is why I could not have borne to see you last night. I am not sure I can bear it even now.’ She picked up the goblet again. ‘Ah Isabel, it is so hard, to leave the grey and return to colour. You cannot begin to know what he has done to me.’
    Several maids arrived bearing a tub and pails of steamy water.
    ‘Perhaps not, but I want to help you.’
    Alienor concealed a grimace. Isabel had a penchant for doing good deeds to better the lives of the afflicted. She suspected she was one of them in her eyes. ‘Do not dare pity me,’ she warned.
    Isabel’s hazel-brown eyes widened with hurt. ‘I would never do that! You malign me.’ She produced a vial of rose attar and, going to the tub, tipped some precious drops into thesteaming water, causing a wonderful fragrance to billow into the room.
    ‘You cannot help yourself.’ Alienor softened the comment with a smile, although Isabel continued to look reproachful.
    Once disrobed by Amiria, Alienor stepped into the tub and sank down into the blood-hot rose-scented water, uttering a soft gasp halfway between pain and pleasure.
    Isabel refreshed Alienor’s cup. ‘John and Joanna were so excited to know you were coming,’ she said.
    Alienor’s throat tightened. When Henry had shut her away from the world for rebelling against him, he had shut her away from her children too. Isabel, who was wed to Henry’s half-brother Hamelin, had temporarily taken them into her household to raise with her own children, which had been one small grace amid the devastation. ‘How are they faring?’
    ‘Well indeed – as you will see,’ Isabel said fondly. ‘Joanna is a fine young lady and John and my William have become close friends as well as cousins.’
    ‘It has been a great comfort to me knowing they are safe in your hands.’
    Isabel waved away the acknowledgement but looked pleased. ‘It has been my privilege. They are both so clever. I have never seen anyone so adept at working an exchequer board as John, and Joanna reads aloud with never a stumble.’
    Alienor glowed with pride at Isabel’s acclaim, but felt a guilty frisson of resentment. She should be the one praising such intelligence instead of hearing about it from the lips of another woman, even if Isabel was her sister by marriage and a good friend. Nevertheless, a new mood was clearing her path, like sun burning through fog. She had been shaken back to life and there was no turning back.
    ‘Do you know why Henry has brought me to Winchester?’ she asked as Amiria helped her to don a clean chemise, and a gown of scarlet wool. ‘Harry says he wants to make peace, but I fear his motives will not be to my advantage.’
    Isabel shook her head. ‘Hamelin has said nothing.’
    Alienorsent her a sharp look. ‘He does not know, or he will not tell you?’
    Isabel dropped her gaze. ‘I do not know that either.’
    And she would not venture to ask: Alienor knew Isabel’s propensity for refusing to see life’s harsher realities in their true light.
    ‘I hope you can make peace,’ Isabel said anxiously. ‘It is no life for you at Sarum.’
    Alienor curled her lip. ‘I expect Henry will use life at Sarum as one of his levers. He imprisons me there for nigh on two years, denies me all contact with the world and my children and takes from me all things of grace and luxury. Now he brings me to Winchester and showers me with everything that I lack. But I tell you this: I will never yield him Aquitaine, if that is his price. I would rather return to Sarum. Indeed I would rather be dead.’
    ‘Alienor …’ Isabel extended an imploring hand.
    ‘Do not look at me like that!’ Alienor snapped, and then drew a long breath up through her body, filling herself with life and banking down her irritation. ‘I bless you for waking me up,’ she said in a gentler voice, and kissed Isabel’s cheek. ‘I may not be ready to speak to