“The queen is here.” Mother Bernard’s hand was gentle on mine, her voice soft in my ear.
I sat in the sunshine of the simples garden, painting the lavender which grew there onto the page of the psalter I was illuminating. I lay my brush down, the clean linen beneath it catching the purple paint as it fell.
They had come for me. It had been two months since Henry’s death and I had known that someone would. I felt Mother Bernard’s lips on my hair, warm where the sun hit my curls. I had grown older and used to my own ways, and I no longer wore a veil.
“So, little princess. You have not lost the common touch, I see.”
Eleanor stood in the sunlight of our garden, as if she had appeared there by magic. Her face was shadowed by her veil, but I saw her beauty, still radiant, undimmed by time an
