“Of course it is me,” he said, sounding surprised and faintly defensive. “Who else? Do not tell me you expected that milksop Louis to keep vigil at your deathbed?”
“I am not sure I expected you to keep vigil, either, Harry,” she confessed.
“Well, if you make me wait much longer, I’ll be off,” he warned. “You are nigh on eighty, Eleanor. Are you going to outlive Methuselah from sheer contrariness?”
“Will you stop badgering her? You can see, Maman, that eternity has not improved his temper any.”
“Richard?” Tears blurred her eyes, tears of joy. She sensed others were there, too, beloved ghosts so long gone from her life, torn from her heart. Her sins had been many, but she’d atoned for them, endured her Purgatory and Hell here on earth. There was nothing to fear. The sudden silence alarmed her, though. Surely they’d wait for her? “Richard? Harry? Do not go! Stay with me. . . .”
“We are here,” came the reassuring answer. “We are here.”
RICHENZA SLIPPED QUIETLY INTO the chamber, holding a candle aloft. At her wordless query, Dame Amaria shook her head, saying that the queen had not regained consciousness. “But she was talking, my lady.”
“She’s done that before,” Richenza said sadly. She yearned for some last lucid moments with her grandmother, but Eleanor’s fevered murmurings were incoherent, not meant for them.
“This was different, my lady. She said ‘Harry’ and ‘Richard’ so very clearly. It was . . . it was as if she were speaking to them, that they were right here in the chamber with us. The doctor insists it was the fever, but I do not think so. See for yourself, my lady.”
Richenza turned toward the bed and her eyes widened. It had been a long time since her grandmother had looked as she did now—at peace. It was as if all the pain and grief of her last years had been erased, and the candlelight was kind, hinting at the great beauty she’d once been in the sculptured hollows of her cheekbones and the flushed color restored by fever. Leaning over, Richenza took the dying woman’s hand.
“Granddame?” Eleanor did not respond, but Richenza was suddenly sure she was listening to other voices, for the corners of her mouth were curving in what could have been a smile.
AFTERWORD
JOHN’S HISTORY IS WELL KNOWN, of course. His kingship was not a successful one. He lost Normandy, Anjou, Maine, and Richard’s “fair daughter,” Chateau Gaillard, and when he died in November 1216, he was fighting for his survival, abandoned by two-thirds of his barons, with a French army on English soil. However, he is always great fun to write about.
Berengaria never married again and struggled in vain to obtain her dower payments from John. She was treated more fairly by the French king, and Philippe bestowed the city of Le Mans upon her in return for her surrender of her dower lands in Normandy. During her long widowhood, she was known as the Lady of Le Mans, and she devoted herself to works of piety, proving to be a generous patron of the Church. She founded the Cistercian abbey of l’Epau near Le Mans, and she was buried there after her death on December 23, 1230. Although several safe conducts were issued to her, there is no evidence that she ever utilized them, and she remains the only Queen of England never to set foot on English soil.