Adventures in Time Travel: At the Court of Henry II

Identities will be concealed in this story to protect the innocent.

No, scratch that. My identity will be concealed.  Everyone else will be named and shamed.

I’d better explain myself.  To the outside world, I’m an art historian, generally to be found in the depths of the Rare Book Reading Room at the British Library, only venturing as far as the National Archives at Kew when I think I can stand the excitement.

Little does anyone know of my secret life.

Mostly, I read about the past.  But sometimes, I visit it.
This time last year my friends thought I was taking a relaxing break in Tuscany. I was really in Windsor…in the year 1184, that is. I was hired by, shall we say, a very illustrious person to infiltrate Henry II’s Christmas Court. My mission: to acquire the Empress Matilda’s crown and bring it back to the present day, thus sparing it the fate of getting lost in the Wash in 1216.

But my goodness, the romantic complications.  Not only did Henry II fall for me, but so did Prince Richard, and Prince John. Just as well I brought my laptop along – by the end of the week I needed an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of it all. What made me such an object of desire to those royal men? Was it destiny? Pheromones? The Chanel No.5 I chucked into my suitcase at the last minute? Or the fact that I was female, sentient and wearing a skirt? I’ll never know.

When I walked into the Great Hall at Windsor, I hoped I was sufficiently camouflaged to fade into the background.  So I wasn’t too pleased when King Henry roared at me, “You, girl!  Over here!”

I approached the throne and made a curtsey.

“Not bad, not bad at all,” he said warmly.  “Come to my chamber tonight.  Don’t pester me for money though, you get paid Tuesdays.”

I had known it might be a mistake to think I could get away with a bit of make-up.

“My lord king, I haven’t come to join the court whores.  I am Lady Moppet of Yorkshire.”

“Oh really?  Well, that does change things.”

“So I needn’t come to your chamber?”

“Most certainly come to my chamber, but don’t expect to get paid.”

Looking round for an escape route, my glance fell on a tall man, dazzlingly blond, who had to be Richard the Lionheart.

Or Richard “Date Rape” Lionheart, as I later learned he was known to the women of the court.

I was conversant with recent research, so it wasn’t a complete surprise when Richard asked me if I’d ‘like to see his swords.’

“This was the one I used at Taillebourg…this was the one I had in Poitou…I’ve cut off twenty-five heads with this one.  No, twenty-six, twenty-six.  This one has my name engraved on it, look.”

When he did make his move, it wasn’t subtle.  In fact the only thing that saved my honour was that Prince John had spied on us and gone to King Henry to tell him Richard was making an attempt on my virtue.  King Henry stormed into the room in a right royal rage wanting to know what Richard was doing on his territory.  (Rather a Freudian slip).  It all ended in a formal duel.

Yes, I achieved what even the Young King’s rebellion had not…King Henry and Richard decided to fight face to face.  And somehow or other, while they were all running round choosing weapons and appointing seconds and what have you, I found myself in a secluded turret bedroom with a jug of hot wine, a dish of lampreys and Prince John.  Fortunately he didn’t push things quite as far as Richard had, so I was able to turn the situation to my advantage: that is, promise I’d be his if he’d help me steal the crown.  He had some quite clever ideas about it, actually.

***

One of the reasons I decided to break my silence was that I wanted to reassure people thinking of infiltrating the Angevin Court – or anywhere else really – is that it isn’t as difficult as one might think.  I imagined I’d have to spend months soaking up the culture until I could pass for an twelfth-century noblewoman, and that even then I’d be shut out from the inner circle, lucky if I caught so much as a glimpse of an ermine-trimmed robe whisking round the corner.  Not a bit of it.  Why, three days after I arrived I was appointed lady-in-waiting to Queen Eleanor.

That was John’s idea.  Eleanor, enjoying the respite from her imprisonment, had ordered the Empress’s crown up from the treasury for the ceremonial crown-wearings, so the best way to get to the crown was to become the Queen’s shadow.  The King Henry thing fitted in rather neatly: John presented me to his mother as a virtuous woman desperate to evade his father’s advances, and she kindly took me under her protection.

Of course, before John could introduce me to Eleanor he had to be introduced to her himself.  Her exact words were: “Richard darling, I know you’ve told me, who is this again?” And after everyone had explained she said, “But I thought youngest sons were always drowned at birth.  They’ve no land…it’s kinder really.”

John was pretty stoical about that (“it was the same last year”) but he did complain about his patronal festival falling four days before New Year, so everyone got him ‘combined’ presents which were less valuable than two separate ones would have been.

“A combined Hours of the Virgin and psalter…a sword that’s short enough to pass as a dagger…a gyrfalcon/peregrine hybrid…I’m sick of it.”

Suddenly the “Two In One: Lapis Lazuli Rosary WITH Gold Pendant Crucifix” that I’d seen on sale when we were looking for a jeweller skilled enough to make an exact copy of the Empress’s crown didn’t seem like such a good bargain after all. But as the crown-wearing approached it was the least of my worries.

***

On Christmas Eve I created the Excel spreadsheet:

Henry “Curtmantle” II: Holding pattern.  Avoid dark corners!

Richard “Date Rape” Lionheart: Holding pattern. Avoid dark corners. DO NOT ACCEPT ANY DRINKS.

John “Buy Me More Presents Because I’m Worth It” Lackland: Proceed.  Impossible to avoid dark corners because needed for plotting in.  Oh well.

I was now faced with what seemed a well-nigh impossible task: to bond with Queen Eleanor so closely that she would entrust me with the task of returning the Empress’s crown to its casket at the end of Christmas Day.  All in a little over forty-eight hours.  Did I succeed?

Of course I did.

Something else potential time-travellers don’t realise: when a relatively unknown, fairly low-ranking woman joins a queen’s household, chances are that within a very short time, she’s going to be her new best friend.  Ancient retainers scowl in the background while the new girl brushes her mistress’s hair and listens to all of her problems.  And, given a sympathetic audience, Eleanor could get very, very talky.  Thus I am able to give a definitive answer to some of the questions that have tantalised her biographers:

Was she a blonde or a brunette?  “Lady Moppet, it’s the strangest thing.  When I was a little girl my hair was a quite a pale gold, and it just darkened and darkened over the years, and now, as you can see, it’s almost black.”

What pushed her to divorce her first husband, Louis of France?  “I couldn’t take any more.  He was insatiable.  I mean in bed.  Yes, I know, he was so religious, did all that praying – well, he had to, to offset the sin.  Didn’t even leave me alone on fast days.  Lent didn’t stop him either.  Never a minute to myself.  I had to divorce him, I was terribly behind with my reading.”

So she wasn’t guilty of adultery then?  “Darling!  You’ve been reading the chroniclers.  You really shouldn’t.  Sex and violence, that’s all that interests them.  Those monks don’t care what they write about as long as they can drag in some sleaze.”

Did my new role as lady-in-waiting restrict my movements?  Not at all.  I slipped away whenever I felt like it, to plot in dark corners and so on.  Eleanor was always understanding, no matter how lame the excuse:

“My garter fell off – had to retie it.”

“Oh my gosh, I took a breather after sorting all those silks and I dropped off – sorry!”

“I really shouldn’t have had the lampreys.”

I’m not even going to bother describing Christmas Day and the processions and the pageantry and all that, because let’s face it, it’s not always the most interesting part, is it?  Suffice it to say that by that night I held Empress Matilda’s crown in my hands.

***

By dawn the jeweller had the original and the copy ready for Prince John and I to collect.  John brought the sword/dagger with him, which helped with negotiating the price.

“Impressive work,” he remarked, studying the copy.  “I’ll say it again – death threats are a great motivator.  You put the copy back in the casket, I’ll find a place to hide the real crown.  Somewhere in your room would be best, there are always lackeys and things nosing round my apartment.  What about your underwear drawer?”

“Gosh, no,” I said.  “Richard’s been through that twice already.”

“No, that was me.”

“What about this duel?”  I asked as we headed back to the castle.  “It’s supposed to be fought today.  Can we do anything to stop it?”

“I was thinking about that,” said John.  “If we can put it off long enough, they’ll forget what the fight was about in the first place.  They always do.”

This was interesting.  I was wondering whether I could get an article out of it once I got back: ‘Prince of Peace?  John of England as Mediator in Angevin Family Quarrels’ when he said:

“I could hardly say no when Father asked me to be his second, but I’m not about to fight.  What Father doesn’t seem to understand is that people get killed in these things.  I don’t mind risking my neck in battle, but not in a tiff over someone’s stupid honour.  My life is too important.  I could be King of England one day, if only enough people die.”

My concern was more that the death of either Henry of Richard would alter the timeline, creating a future which erased me from existence and producing a causal anomaly which would leave me stranded in an alternate universe.  But at least we agreed on one thing: the duel had to be prevented.

So, as soon as it was ready to start, John and I began to voice objections.

“The surgeon isn’t here yet.”

“Is the duelling ground really square?  Because it looks more like a rectangle to me.”

“All right, it’s square now.  But look at it from this angle.  It’s sloping.  That won’t do, we’ll have to find flat ground somewhere else.”

“Surgeon still isn’t here yet.”

“Right, the surgeon’s here.  But have we enough witnesses?”  (By now quite a lot of the crowd had got bored and wandered off).

At the last moment, when the handkerchiefs were about to drop, I shouted, “Wait!”

The spectators snarled.  Even the King said, “Hold your tongue, lass.”

“But my lord king, duels can’t be fought until all non-violent means of resolving the dispute have been exhausted – and there’s one method you probably don’t know about.”

So more time was wasted as the combatants adjourned to a bridge and listened to me explain the rules of Poohsticks.

“Best of three!” yelled Henry as Richard’s stick was first to be sighted on the other side of the bridge.

He won the next two rounds, but now Richard wasn’t satisfied.

“My stick was slower than yours because it was bigger.”

“The hell it was!  Admit it, you’re just a poor loser.”

After five minutes’ brisk argument I declared the last round null and void.

“You know,” murmured John when we had chosen new sticks, “I think the current is slightly stronger.  On Father’s side.”

We eventually decided it wasn’t.  But the next round was affected by wind drift.

“And now,” roared the King, “it’s too dark to see the ruddy sticks!”

He threw the sticks to the ground and jumped on them repeatedly.

We straggled back to the castle in disarray.

***

I must say the stuffed boar’s head and plum pudding at supper did a lot to raise everyone’s morale.  The King began to talk of another round of Poohsticks in the morning.  As I went upstairs I heard Richard asking someone if she wanted to see his swords.

I was slightly worried that the crown would have disappeared, but when John and I investigated it was still there, nestled in my lingerie.  We took it out to gloat over it.

“We’ll take it to London after New Year to have the jewels prised out and the metal melted down,” said John.  “We won’t get full value because it’s obviously stolen goods, but that’s larceny for you.  Well – “ he glanced at me sideways, “ – I’ve fulfilled my part of our bargain.  So it’s your turn.”

Nowhere in my Excel spreadsheet was there a note on how to get out of keeping my promise to sleep with Prince John.  That’s because I had no intention of getting out of it.  I felt I deserved some fun after all my hard work.

The next morning I woke up alone.  There was a note pinned to the pillow.

Sorry darling, I’m not very good at sharing.  Hope you aren’t too miffed.  Have a drink sometime?  Best love, J.

The crown was gone.

(So was some of my underwear.)

And so, as I discovered when I got downstairs, were everybody’s presents.

And not a few of Richard’s swords.

***

Richard and Henry were so furious with John for absconding with their stuff that they temporarily forgot their differences.  By late morning they were raising their voices together in song.  That is, they were bawling out obscene versions of Christmas carols while Queen Eleanor attempted to finish her book.  From time to time she murmured, “When can I go back to prison?”

I put on a hooded cloak and slipped out.

Waiting for me, half hidden in the mist which swirled round the bridge, was the man who’d masterminded my whole mission.

Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany.

I wouldn’t say Geoffrey was necessarily more intelligent than his father and brothers.  But he never let his emotions get in the way.  And he did have the advantage of not being blinded by desire.  He had seen straight away that I was not what I seemed.  Nothing got past him.  He’d even spotted my contact lenses.

I’d been forced to admit my true identity to him.  Fortunately, we’d been able to help each other.

As I threw back my hood he held out Matilda’s crown.

The real one, that is.

“Better take this and go,” he said.  “When John realises he hasn’t got the real thing he’ll head back here in a fury.”

“Yes, you were absolutely right about him stealing it,” I said.  “It’s as well we got the jeweller to make two fakes.  Well, thanks for keeping the crown for me.  You’ve been such a help.  Frankly, it made a refreshing change to speak to someone who wasn’t lusting after me.  I was feeling such a Mary Sue.”

What did Geoffrey get in return for his assistance?  Something more valuable to him than cash.  I’d decided the situation warranted selective disclosure of non-classified information.  His foreknowledge of certain future events gave him and his ally, Philip Augustus of France, a considerable advantage in their dealings with other powers.

My client was delighted with the Empress’s crown.  It can’t be seen in public; questions would be asked.  But she likes to wear it while she’s watching TV.

And me?  I may undertake another mission one day.  If national security is at stake.  Or if, you know, the money’s good.

***

More about Adventures in Time Travel, with links to the sequels, here

Start reading the sequel, Deeper Undercover, here