The Queen's Pawn Read Online Free PDF Page A

still until it passed.
    I raised one hand, and my women brought forth my chessboard, the board I had not played on in years, since Henry left me for Rosamund. The pieces were finely wrought in gold and silver. I had brought them back in my retinue from the Holy Land. Louis had given them to me.
    I had always meant to teach Richard to play, but while military strategy fired his mind as nothing else, he could rarely sit still long enough to indulge in a game with me. I missed my son, and my sickness for him pierced me. I looked at my new daughter.
    “This is a chessboard,” I told her.
    Alais reached for the silver queen, but when I said the word “chess,” she drew her hand back, as if the board had caught fire.
    “That is an infidel game,” she said. “My papa told me.”
    I almost laughed, but I saw the earnestness in her face, and I held my tongue. I picked up the gold queen from my side of the board, and fingered it lovingly. I thought of all the times my old lover Raymond and I had whiled away the hours, playing at this very board. No wonder Louis cursed the gift he himself had given me.
    “Well,” I said, “your papa is right. Arabs began this tradition. But it was a Christian knight who designed this board, and who cast these pieces for me.”
    “Has it been blessed?” Alais asked.
    Again, I did not laugh at her. I knew of Louis’ superstition, of his devotion to the Church. I could only imagine how much of that blind belief he had passed on to her. I knew, no matter how long it took, that I would cleanse her of religion. I would teach her to think.
    In honor of future teachings, I swallowed a scathing reply. Instead, I lied. “Yes,” I said. “My confessor blessed it yesterday.”
    Alais looked at me suspiciously. Though she saw the gleam of mirth in my eyes, she decided to trust me. She lifted the heavy silver queen, a piece so large it filled her palm. On the board of inlaid ivory and ebony, trimmed in gold and lapis, that queen stood three inches tall.
    “She is beautiful,” Alais said, all thought of infidels forgotten. She knew at once that the piece in her hand was a woman. She knew, without my having to tell her, that in this game it was not the king but the queen who ruled. Alais was the daughter of my soul before she ever knew it, a girl to match my mind as well as my spirit.
    I set my own queen down, and she did the same. I raised my first pawn, and spoke. “Let us begin.”
    “I do not know how to play,” she said.
    I smiled as her clear maple eyes met mine. “I know, little princess. I shall teach you.”

Chapter 3
    ALAIS: A STOLEN SEASON
    Abbey of St. Agnes, Bath
May 1169
     
     
    I cannot tell you how I loved Eleanor. From the first moment I met her, I knew I would love her all my life.
    Eleanor took me in and sheltered me when I had nothing and no one. The food I eat, the wine I drink, the way I bathe, even my strategies at chess, were all learned at her hands. She kept me with her for months when I first came to England, though she and the king had planned to send me to a nunnery to be raised by the sisters until the time came for my marriage to their son.
    Eleanor kept me by her far longer than she was meant to. I believe that once I was with her, once we had found such kinship un-looked for, she did not want to let me go. Perhaps she hoped that King Henry would simply forget that I had come, and she could keep me with her indefinitely.
    During our time together, Eleanor taught me a little dancing, how to play a lute, how to smile graciously at fools. She taught me all these lessons and more.
    Her hair was the color of burnished bronze where it peeped out from beneath her wimple. She let me brush it every night, after she sent her women away, when we were left alone. And always, from the first moment I saw her, I knew why my father once had loved her. For she was the most beautiful woman in the world.
    It was her bones that held her beauty, the strong cheekbones and chin that were