A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver Read online

  Contents

  Inside Heaven

  PART I

  Abbot Suger’s Tale

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Back in Heaven

  PART II

  Matilda-Empress’s Tale

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Back in Heaven

  PART III

  William the Marshal’s Tale

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Back in Heaven

  PART IV

  Eleanor of Aquitaine’s Own Tale

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Back in Heaven

  Mysterious Edge of the World Excerpt

  Talk Talk Excerpt

  About E. L. Konigsburg

  For Manci and for David, who taught me freedom from its two directions.

  DURING HER LIFETIME Eleanor of Aquitaine had not been a patient woman. While she had lived, she had learned to bide her time, but biding one’s time is a very different thing from patience. After she had died, and before she had arrived in Heaven, it had been necessary for Eleanor to learn some patience. Heaven wouldn’t allow her Up until she had. But there were times, like today, when she wasn’t sure whether she had really learned any patience at all or whether she had simply become too tired to be quarrelsome.

  Today she was restless. She paced back and forth so rapidly that the swish of her robes ruffled the treetops below. For today was the day when her husband, King Henry II of England, was to be judged. Today she would at last know whether or not—after centuries of waiting—he would join her in Heaven.

  Henry had died even before she had. He had died in the year 1189, in July of that year, and Eleanor had spent fifteen years on Earth beyond that. But Eleanor’s life had not been perfect; she had done things on Earth for which there had been some Hell to pay, so she had not arrived in Heaven immediately. Finally, the world’s poets had pleaded and won her case. Eleanor had been a friend of music and poetry while she had lived, and musicians, artists and poets play an important role in the admissions policies of Heaven; with their pull Eleanor had moved Up. Even so, she had not arrived in Heaven until two centuries after she had died and long after her first husband and some of her best friends had made it. Now it was late in the twentieth century, and Henry still had not moved Up.

  Eleanor began drumming her fingers on a nearby cloud.

  “You keep that up, and you’ll have the Angels to answer to for it,” said a voice, one cloud removed.

  “Oh, Mother Matilda, I swear you could nag a person to a second death.”

  A man sitting beside Mother Matilda pleaded, “Your mother-in-law is only reminding you that we have all been requested to stop drumming our fingers and to stop racing back and forth. The Angels don’t appreciate having to answer hundreds of requests for better television reception.”

  “I know, William, I know,” Eleanor answered.

  “After all,” Mother Matilda added, “we are every bit as anxious as you are to know the outcome of today’s Judgment.”

  “You ought to be patient, my lady,” William said.

  “Yes,” Eleanor answered. “I know. I know what I ought to be. I have always known what I ought to be.”

  But the truth was that Eleanor actually enjoyed not being patient. When she felt impatient, she felt something close to being alive again. Even after more than five hundred years in Heaven, Eleanor of Aquitaine still missed quarreling and dressing up. Eleanor missed strong, sweet smells. Eleanor missed feeling hot and being cold. Eleanor missed Henry. She missed life.

  She sighed. She wanted to be there the minute Henry arrived—if he would; there was a great deal to tell him. It had taken Eleanor almost five hundred years to catch up on the two hundred she had missed. She often thought that the worst thing about time spent in Hell is that a person has no way of knowing what is happening on Earth. In Heaven at least, one could watch, even if one could not participate. Only Saints and Angels were allowed to interfere in Earthly affairs. Everyone in Heaven had periods of Earth time about which they knew nothing. Everyone except the Saints; they always came Up immediately following death, and, of course, Heaven had always been home to the Angels. But Saints were hardly the people to contact when you wanted to catch up on the news. Most of them had been more concerned with Heaven than with Earth even during their lifetimes, and now it was almost impossible to move them even a whisper away from the Angels.

  Eleanor turned around looking toward the night side of Earth. Perhaps she could spot an outdoor movie screen. Watching that would help her pass some minutes. As she turned her face toward night, and her back toward the two people waiting with her, she spotted Abbot Suger. Eleanor called to him, and the good Abbot stopped to rest at her side.

  “Haven’t seen you for a long time, Abbot,” she said.

  “Oh,” he answered, “I was over at admissions. They just let an English teacher Up, and he made a beeline for Shakespeare.”

  “They all do.”

  “Yes, I know,” the Abbot chuckled, “but I like to watch.”

  “What did this one want to discuss?”

  Abbot Suger laughed out loud. “This one didn’t want to discuss anything. He presented Mr. Shakespeare with a list of errors he had made in geography and history.”

  “I wonder how he smuggled his list past the Judges. No one is supposed to carry a single grudge into Heaven, let alone a list of them.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” the Abbot said. “I sometimes suspect that the Judges close an eye. It’s always fun to see an English teacher’s first encounter with Shakespeare. I think that the Judges, serious as they are, enjoy it, too.”

  Eleanor said, half to herself, “Shakespeare wrote a play about my son King John that wasn’t too accurate either. He gave me a small part in it, but he certainly didn’t give me any good lines.”

  “Ah, Eleanor,” Abbot Suger replied, “Shakespeare was far better at writing of heroes than of heroines.”

  “Maybe so,” she said, “but then I wonder why he wrote nothing of Henry.”

  “Oh! my goodness,” Suger said, “he wrote of Henry. Plenty of Henrys. He wrote Henry IV, Henry V, Parts I and II, Henry VI, Part I and Henry VI, Part II.”

  “But not my Henry!” Eleanor shouted.

  “Eleanor! Eleanor!” Abbott Suger said, “Calm down.”

  “You never knew my Henry,” Eleanor said. “You only knew Louis, my first husband.”

  “And my foremost pupil,” the Abbot added.

  “Shakespeare should have written of my Henry.” Eleanor poked at the cloud absentmindedly. She continued staring at the cloud and said in a low voice, “Henry is being judged today. That’s why I’m so excitable. And that’s why they’re here,” she added, flinging a look over her shoulder. “The lady is Henry’s mother, Matilda-Empress, and the man is William the Marshal, a true and loyal knight.”

  Abbot Suger glanced in the direction that Eleanor
indicated and nodded and smiled at the man and the woman. They nodded back. The Abbot then leaned closer to Eleanor and asked, “Who is pleading Henry’s case?”

  “Lawyers,” Eleanor answered. “I always knew that if we ever got enough lawyers into Heaven, they would plead for him.”

  “Why would lawyers plead for a king? Kings have long been out of fashion with the law.”

  “My Henry laid the foundation of the whole court system of England,” Eleanor announced proudly.

  “Really?”

  “Henry was due Up long before this, but it had taken almost eight hundred years to get enough lawyers Up to make a case.”

  “Yes,” Abbot Suger agreed, “in Heaven lawyers are as hard to find as bank presidents.” Abbot Suger nodded his head, trying to remember something back in the centuries. “Eleanor,” he said hesitatingly, “was it not Henry who made you a prisoner?”

  “It certainly was,” Eleanor agreed. “Henry kept me locked up for fifteen years.”

  “And you still want him with you in Heaven?”

  “Oh, goodness! yes. I think Heaven is much what he deserves. I want him to be every bit as bored as I am . . .” She laughed, looking quickly over at Suger to see if what she had said had made him angry. After all, Abbot Suger was a priest, and priests have always held Heaven in very high regard. But Abbot Suger was not angry; he had a good sense of humor. He had always been a favorite of Eleanor’s.

  Abbot Suger asked, “Why did you divorce Louis? I was Below when you did; I missed it.”

  “I knew you would not go straight to Heaven. I knew that you were too much in love with the world for an abbot.”

  “Actually, Eleanor, I have no complaints. Any man with responsibilities in government is bound for Hell, at least for a little while. But I spent less than a century Below. I arrived Up shortly before you died. I looked down on you on your deathbed. You seemed to have died in peace.”

  “How did you know that Henry had made me a prisoner?”

  “Oh, the usual deathbed gossip—accounting good deeds and bad.”

  “Was my divorce from Louis listed in the good column or the bad?”

  “The bad. Why did you divorce him?”

  Eleanor tilted her head and smiled. “Because you weren’t there any longer to hold us together, I guess. You died, remember?”

  “Of course I remember dying. I remember everything. I remember our first meeting in Bordeaux when you were to wed the young Louis, the boy whom I had taught to love God.”

  “How did Eleanor appear to you when you first saw her?” Matilda-Empress asked, moving forward.

  “That is hard to say,” Abbot Suger answered.

  “Why?”

  “Because my first look at her was colored by her reputation. And her wealth.”

  Matilda-Empress smiled. “I must say that I, too, had an eye on Eleanor’s lands before I set eyes on her.”

  “And I,” said William the Marshal, “first encountered Queen Eleanor in defense of her person and her wealth.” No one said anything. “As well befitted a man of my calling,” William added. Everyone looked at William, but still they said nothing. “I was a knight, you know.”

  “Yes, we know,” said Matilda-Empress.

  “Yes,” Eleanor added, “a true and noble knight.”

  Matilda-Empress turned from William and addressed the abbot. “I am curious about the young Eleanor.”

  “My mother-in-law cannot believe that what I am now is an improvement over what I was then. Tell her what she wants to know, Abbot Suger. Tell her about the young Eleanor. It will help all of us to pass the time.”

  “Certainly,” Abbot Suger said. “It is good to review.”

  “Ah, Abbot, you, too, miss living. Heaven is often a pale substitute.”

  Suger spun his head around toward Eleanor; he attempted a frown, but he couldn’t manage one. His face broke into a broad grin. “Bite your tongue, lady.”

  Eleanor laughed. “Certainly, Abbot. Only I speak it, even though we both think it. Now, let us remember. Come, Abbot, Mother Matilda, William, come. Let us remember together.”

  1

  KING LOUIS VI and I were staying in a hunting lodge outside Paris when word came that William, Duke of Aquitaine, had died. Just before his death, Duke William had sent messengers to his king; the messengers carried a request. They knew the king would listen, for although the Duke of Aquitaine was a vassal to the king, he was far richer, just as an oilman may be far richer than a prime minister.

  William of Aquitaine had a daughter; her name was Eleanor. William’s death made Eleanor the richest orphan in Europe. But in those days when all the lords of Aquitaine were fighting among themselves as well as fighting their duke, it took a lot of brawling to hold onto the lands. No woman could do it alone. William knew that his daughter would need a husband, and that is why he had sent messengers to his king. William of Aquitaine wanted his daughter Eleanor wed to the king’s son, Prince Louis. With Eleanor would come her lands. With Louis would come a title. A good marriage. A marriage of pomp and pocketbook. William of Aquitaine knew that King Louis could not pass up a bargain.

  And, sick though he was, King Louis VI did not.

  The king was ill, very ill. We had left Paris to escape the summer’s heat. Louis suffered more than most people from the heat, for he was overweight. History books call him Louis le Gros, which means Louis the Fat. He was fat; he could neither put on his own shoes nor mount his horse, but his mind was as lean and as quick as his body was fat and slow. He lost no time in calling the prince to his side and telling him that he was about to be married. Louis was seventeen at the time.

  “Yes, father,” Young Louis said, “whom do you wish me to marry?”

  “The Duchess of Aquitaine,” Louis the Fat answered.

  “Yes, father,” Young Louis replied. He turned and started to leave his father’s room. (The smell in the room helped to keep all of the king’s interviews short.) Prince Louis had a second thought; he turned back and asked, “Is she old, father?”

  “Old enough,” Louis the Fat answered.

  “Yes, father.”

  I followed Young Louis out of the castle and began walking with him. We were good friends. He was a head taller than I. Most men were. But Louis was fair, and I was proud of his good looks. I loved everything beautiful, thanks be to God, but I especially loved Louis. I felt like a father to him. In a sense I was his father—his spiritual one. I had been his teacher.

  “Her name is Eleanor,” I began.

  “Oh?” Louis answered, trying to act unconcerned.

  “Yes. Her name is Eleanor, and she is well educated.”

  “Does that mean, dear Abbot, that she embroiders beautifully and knows the proper order in which to hand armor to a knight?”

  “Yes, it does.” I smiled, “but in this case, fortunately, it also means something more. She can read Latin, and I am told that she knows a great deal of music and poetry. She comes by those talents naturally; her grandfather was a poet as well as a knight.”

  “Do all these talents occupy a fair head or a plain one?” Louis asked.

  “A fair one, I am told.”

  “An old one?” the prince asked.

  “In many ways old. She has traveled much and seen much.”

  Young Louis’s hands dropped to his sides. He could act casual no longer. “I may marry the dowry for my father, but I must marry the dame for me. I must know, Abbot. Is she an old lady?”

  I laughed. “She is fifteen, Louis. Only fifteen, but that is the least of her measures. In many ways she is much more than fifteen.”

  Louis laughed. “Oh, Abbot, I am relieved. I am so inexperienced with women that I do not want someone who is very old.” Then he had second thoughts. He turned suddenly and asked, “What do you mean when you say that fifteen is the least of her measures? Is she fat?”

  “No,” I reassured him. “She is the daughter of a William, not a Louis.”

  The prince smiled.

&n
bsp; * * *

  King Louis put me in charge of gathering men and materials for our journey to Aquitaine. The king was too sick to do it, but even if he had been well, he would have given the job to me. I had excellent taste, thanks be to God, and a great gift for organizing.

  I called together all the important dukes and counts who were vassals of the king, and I fitted them with elegant armor and trappings. I selected a jeweled ring and a gold buckle, worked with enamel, for the prince to give his bride as a wedding gift.

  As we rode through the lands that lay between Eleanor and Louis, we paid every toll at every bridge and every tax at every crossing. We carried as many supplies as we could, buying only what we had to. When high prices were asked, we paid them with a smile. We never haggled. I would not allow it. It would not have been dignified.

  Even so, the trip was not easy. The armor was elegant, but it was also uncomfortable. It grew hotter because we were moving further into summer and further into the south. At times the glare of the sun striking the armor blinded the men behind. And hot! The men complained that they were being served to Eleanor as a human stew—cooked in their own salt water. I thanked God that I was a simple man of the cloth. But for the sake of the others it became necessary to travel at night.

  Finally, we arrived at Bordeaux, the town where the wedding was to take place. We camped across the river from the city and rested; we wanted no trace of weariness to show when we appeared at the palace the next morning.

  But Prince Louis was restless, unable to sleep. He came into my tent. “Abbot,” he began, “if Eleanor is such a great prize, why was she not engaged long before now? Rich girls are usually betrothed as infants.”

  “Ah, Louis,” I said, “I could ask you the same question. Rich princes also are betrothed as infants.”

  “But in my case the answer is simple, Abbot. I was not meant to be rich. I am a second son. I was meant to be a priest, and I would have been one if my brother Philip’s horse had not tripped over that old sow and broken Philip’s neck in the process. He, not I, was born to be the king of France. I am second son and second choice, and that is why I have not been promised in marriage. What is Eleanor’s reason?”