Windsor Castle February 1173 Alais had the strength of a lion. I had always known this, but I saw it clearly on the day her child died. My daughter stood strong in the face of the loss of Henry, and the loss of the Crown. I saw at once that such things were as nothing to her, compared to the love she bore her child. Alais came back to herself as she held her daughter in her arms. She did not weep when her child’s spirit flew, but dried her eyes on the fur the babe was wrapped in, as if my furs were made to dry her tears. Her waiting woman brought from her clothespress the deep blue gown that had come from Henry. Alais took the scissors from Marie Helene’s workbasket, and cut away the skirt. The royal blue silk gleamed in the light of the lamps. Alais fingered it, and decided¹ that it was soft enough to touch her daughter’s skin. She wrapped the child in that blue silk, until only the baby’s face was visible above the cloth. She leaned down and kissed her daughter’s brow. Already, it was as cold as stone. After she laid her child down, we both looked at that little girl. All my own lost children came back to me, one by one: Charles, who had died stillborn in the Levant; little William, who had not lived to see his third birthday; and Isabelle, Louis’ infant daughter, buried and left behind long ago in France. At sunset, we stood together in the churchyard in the cold wind of that winter day. Rose did not rest in a box, but was laid directly into the earth, still wrapped in blue silk. The sight of her child laid in the ground was Alais’ undoing². She almost dived into the grave, to bring her baby out of it, but I held her back. “It is hard,” I said. “Nothing will ever be as hard as this. But you must bear it.” The priest made the sign of the cross. When I nodded my permission, he went into the chapel³ to prepare for the mass that would be sung for the child’s soul. In spite of all my teachings, I still had not wrested⁴ from Alais her childhood religion. That day, for the first time, I was glad I had not. Perhaps her religion and her prayers would bring her some consolation⁵, when I myself could not. That night, Alais and I sat alone in the rooms that once had been mine. Her waiting woman, Marie Helene, would not leave us; only when I ordered her, and made it clear that I would

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