The second Henry came to the throne in 1154. At nineteen, he had married Eleanor of Aquitaine, a marriage between powerful political allies. Exceptionally beautiful, ambitious, and willful, Eleanor was the richest woman in the known world, the possessor of almost half the territory that is now France, and eleven years Henry’s senior. Her age hardly mattered at the time of their marriage, and in the course of the next thirteen years, Eleanor bore her husband five sons and three daughters.
But Henry took a number of mistresses, the most famous of whom was Rosamund de Clifford. She was very young, perhaps only fifteen. Henry had already begun to expand his father’s hunting lodge at Woodstock into a royal palace, and when he brought Rosamund there, he built her a house of her own: Rosamund’s Bower, it was called, a bower being a rural retreat. Historians disagreed about the truth of this story, but that hardly mattered to Beryl Bardwell, who was quite happy when historical ambiguity gave Kate’s imagination a freer rein.
What did matter was that the Rosamund legends had evolved over the centuries into a fascinating, if contradictory, literary tradition. In ballad and story, Rosamund’s Bower became a palatial establishment of stone and timber, with 150 doors, surrounded by a maze “so cunningly contrived with turnings round about, that none but with a clue of thread could enter in or out.” Some of the tales suggested that the king constructed the labyrinth to barricade the beautiful young girl against his jealous queen and against other rivals-one of whom, Roger of Salisbury, was said to have fallen so desperately in love with Rosamund that he tried to carry her off. Others hinted that Rosamund herself would have been glad enough to escape from the king, but she was now his captive, trapped in their sinful liaison (symbolized by the legendary labyrinth, of course).
In the legend, Henry’s Herculean efforts to defend his mistress ultimately failed. Eleanor visited the palace at Woodstock. When Henry came to her one morning, she saw that his spur had snagged a golden thread. Following the thread through the maze, Eleanor discovered Rosamund. Shortly thereafter, Rosamund was found dead. She had been poisoned.
Had the aging, vengeful Eleanor murdered her beautiful young rival? Or had Rosamund been killed by a treacherous servant, or even by the desperate Roger of Salisbury? Or had she-stricken with shame, sick with scandal and disgrace, realizing that she was imprisoned for life-killed herself?
Beryl, of course, found these questions deliciously enthralling, for the legends offered a wealth of story material for their novel, some of it wonderfully lurid and exactly the sort of mystery she loved. Kate herself was always more circumspect and tried to keep within the bounds of the believable. If history said that Eleanor had been in Henry’s prison at the time of Rosamund’s death and hence could not possibly have killed her, that settled the matter.
But Beryl was bolder, and insisted on holding open all the possibilities as long as possible. So what if the queen was shut up in jail? she argued. What makes you think she couldn’t have hired a killer to do the dirty deed for her?
To which Kate had no immediate answer. In such matters, Beryl was usually right, and Kate usually gave in. For now, at least, they would leave the questions open and see where the story took them.
By this time, Kate had arrived at the end of the bridge and was setting off along the narrow path that led down the hill to the left, in the direction of Rosamund’s Well. The grass was damp and slippery, and she had to scramble to keep her footing. But the soft gray light was exactly what she wanted, and when she reached the Well, she unfolded her stool, opened her sketchpad, and set to work.
The spring, she saw, issued out of an ancient, moss-covered stone wall and fell into a square pool, about twenty feet by twenty, set within a paved area. When an observer had described the site some two hundred years before, there had been three pools, and a seat built into the wall, as well as the ruins of an old building and much stone paving. Now, Kate and Beryl had to use their imaginations in order to see what might have been there in Rosamund’s time: a pleasant rustic bower, a paved courtyard, a pear orchard, a fragrant herb garden filled with birds and butterflies, and perhaps a series of bubbling waterfalls, where the waters of the spring danced down the rocky slope.
The mist swirled through the trees and over the lake, concealing Blenheim Palace on the opposite shore. Surrounded by the gray swirls, Kate could imagine herself carried back to Rosamund’s time, on a morning when two lovers stood in a pleasant garden beside a spring, absorbed in their passion and seeing nothing of the turmoil around them. For a moment, she was swept by Rosamund’s feelings-a tumble of delight, apprehension, and the reckless, headstrong abandonment that comes with passion. And Henry’s-his desire, his need, his concern for Rosamund’s well-being, his determination to keep what belonged to him. And Eleanor’s, as well. The older woman, losing her husband to a younger; the queen, in danger of losing her kingdom and her freedom; the jealous wife, filled with a hateful bitterness.
Beryl was right. All the elements were here, and more.
Compelling characters and a tantalizing setting, within a rich background of legend, tradition, and history. She had only to let her imagination go free, and she would be able to create a wonderfully powerful story, perhaps the best she had ever written.
But as Kate sat, lost in a misty vision of the past, her attention was caught by something very real and entirely unimaginary: a scrap of burnished gold silk snagged on a low holly bush in front of her. She leaned forward and picked it off, turning it over in her fingers. The silk was exactly the shade of the dress that Gladys Deacon had worn to dinner the night before.
For Kate, the sight of the scrap of silk evoked the scene at the dining table: Marlborough’s possessive hand on Gladys’s wrist, Gladys’s provocative smile, Lord Northcote’s angrily jealous glance, Consuelo’s sad mouth. And Gladys’s idea for a folly, “a sort of Gothic ruin,” she had said, “where people could go and pretend to be Rosamund and King Henry and fall madly in love.” And then another image flickered across the first, like a blurry double exposure, the ancient story of adulterous love, annihilating jealousies, and bitter rivalries, reenacted in the present. Gladys playing Rosamund, Marlborough as Henry, Consuelo as Eleanor, and Botsy Northcote as Roger of Salisbury.
And in her mind, she heard Beryl, speaking in an ominous whisper. Something awful has happened, Kate. There’s been a tragedy here, a death. I know it. I can feel it!
Kate shivered, for a moment overwhelmed with apprehension. But Beryl was often overly dramatic, and as she considered the situation, she could see no reason to imagine any sort of tragedy. Apart from the exchange of gesture and glance at the dinner table, and that silly business about the folly, the previous evening had been rather ordinary.
After dinner, they had adjourned to the Saloon. No one seemed to feel much like conversation, so Kate, Charles, Northcote, and Winston had played a hand of bridge. Pleading weariness and a return of her headache, Consuelo excused herself and went to bed. When she was gone, as if by a secret signal, Gladys and the Duke announced that they were going for a walk. A few moments later, Northcote flung down his cards, rose, and went to the window, where he stood for a while with his back to the room, smoking a cigarette and looking out at the moonlit garden. Then he, too, pled weariness and went off to bed.
“I’m not much for three-handed bridge,” Winston had said. “Charles, perhaps you and I could enjoy a cigar while you tell me what you think of those chapters I sent you.” So Charles and Winston had gone to the smoking room, and Kate had gone upstairs to her book. As evenings went, this one had been on the quiet side.