< previous page page_134 next page >

Page 134
For Alinor to make the several copies that were needed, however, took far longer than Alinor realized it would. As she labored, she gave an apologetic thought to her own scribes, whom she had more than once reviled for dilatoriness. The letters she wrote often made up for her cramped hand and back, however. Naturally, Alinor was not employed on any state business. What she wrote were the Queen's personal letters to her daughters, to vassals' wives, to the abbesses and abbots of religious houses. Nonetheless, all the letters contained news and, besides, nothing the Queen said or did was entirely without some political purpose.
Alinor was a little surprised at some of the things the Queen had her writeusually when she was abed and all the attendants had been dismissed. These tidbits seemed very private indeed and were often so short that the Queen could have added them herself without much labor. True, they were not matters that could overset realms, but they could overset reputations and, in a few cases, alter the line of inheritance in certain families. True to her promise to herself, Alinor never breathed a hint of these tasty tidbits of information to anyone.
It was not that she was not asked. Suddenly she found herself Isobel of Gloucester's bosom companion and a pivot around which that lady's sycophants whirled. Alinor had too much sense to make herself important or mysterious by saying she could not tell or refusing flatly to answer the sly questions Isobel put to her. She spoke very readily of the Queen's personal account books and how carefully every pair of gloves and stockings were recorded therein. She did not fail to quote the pious passages of letters to abbesses. She was fulsomely informative about the health and welfare of the Queen's grandchildren. She talked more than Isobel herselfand said even less.
Simon saw a little too late what he had been maneuvered into arranging by being told to complain of

 
< previous page page_134 next page >