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back for me.
    I sat at my high table, the sunlight warm on my hands. The light brought out the auburn hidden in the brown of my hair.
    “You have grown beautiful, little princess. I would not have known you.”
    Eleanor stood in the doorway of the cloister garden, her eyes on me. Her bronze hair was hidden under her wimple, but I could see her green eyes glinting. She had not aged a day. It was as if she had prayed to the Virgin to stay ever youthful, ever beautiful, the better to hold all men in her sway.
    I sat there, thinking these things, caught, as all men are, by the power of her eyes. Then she smiled at me, and she was the woman I remembered, the woman who had made me welcome when I had nothing, and no one. The child in me wanted to run to her, to feel her arms around me. But I was a woman now, and it had been almost three years since I had last seen her.
    Then, too, as always, she was queen. The court manners I had mastered as soon as I learned to walk called to me from my childhood. Long ago, I had known when to bow and when to kneel, and had done so as thoughtlessly as I drew my next breath.
    I laid my paintbrush down, knowing that I might never take it up again. Eleanor had come for me, and I must follow her. I had not come among my father’s enemies to become a woman of God. I had come to marry, and to hold the English king to our treaty, if I could. I had come to give my life, and the lives of my children, to keep the fragile peace.
    I climbed down from my stool gracefully, and curtsied to Eleanor.
    The queen bent close to my table to better see my work. After looking at the parchment for a long time, Eleanor raised her head and stared at me.
    “I did not know you had such work in you, Alais.”
    “Neither did I, Your Majesty. Until God showed me.”
    At the mention of God, Eleanor stepped away from my worktable. “I am glad that you have learned this art, Princess, but what of the other things I ordered you to learn? Do you practice your Latin and your Spanish?”
    “Yes, Your Majesty.”
    I moved toward her, feeling her eyes on me as if they were hands, reaching out to trip me. I did not falter. I stood beside her in the sunlight and let her look her fill.
    Eleanor took my chin in her hand and turned my face to the sunlight.
    “You move well,” she said, “though I would teach you different ways of walking. I did not send you here to make a nun of you, but a strong woman who will be the mother of my grandsons.”
    “Yes, Your Majesty.”
    She looked at my skin, at the youthful flawlessness of my complexion. I bathed my face in goats’ milk once a day at the Mother’s insistence. I had always thought it a foolish practice, but now, as I stood under the queen’s scrutiny, I was glad that I had.
    I stared into Eleanor’s eyes, and wondered if she had become a stranger. It was then that she smiled at me, and I knew her once more.
    “I missed you, Alais. More than you know.”
    Even then, I did not wrap my arms around her, but waited. I knew it was not my place. It was for her to bring me close, if she wished it.
    Eleanor raised her jeweled hands. She took my face between her palms so that I could not look away.
    “I will bring you to my son. But for as long as I can, I will keep you with me.”
    She kissed me then, and I clutched her as I had longed to do for all the years we had been apart. Eleanor held me close, her strength flowing into me, so that I felt truly myself once more for the first time since she went away.

Chapter 4
    ELEANOR: THE LARGER WORLD
    Winchester Castle
May 1172
    The first thing I did, once I took Alais out of that nunnery, was to arrange decent dress. I could not stand to see her in the rags they clothed her in. I thought I had been clear when I left her there, regarding what was due a princess of France. She was not there to take vows, after all, but to be held in safekeeping for me.
    Well, Alais was safe, after all, and clothes could be changed. The first day I came to her,