Warm sun beat down upon the Anjou day, the morning still early, the sky a crisp blue while thin white clouds tipped with grey, flitted across like birds soaring endlessly high in the heavens above a quiet scene of peaceful historic contemplation.
The Abbaye de Fontevraud lay gleaming in the sunshine, its roof glinting like dull gold, reflecting the late summer, its quiet beauty of Romanesque architecture resplendent.
Approaching the western façade, the arched doorway through which a faint light appeared and filtered down to the four effigies that lay close together toward the end of the long aisleless nave and transepts with chapels - two kings, a queen and the wife of another king, all from the same Plantagenet family. The whereabouts of their bones still unknown.
Richard I, once King of England, Duke of Normandy, supposedly lay at rest here in Fontevraud Abbey not far from the Loire river in France, who, after twice rebelling against his father, became a king, a crusader of renown and gifted military leader of men, a warrior who had led his army against the Muslim leader Saladin. He had left the ruling of England to others while his younger brother John, schemed in his absence, to claim England's throne for himself, but only achieving that after the death of Richard.
The walls of the abbey soared high above where Richard lay. He had taken an unfortunate arrow in the shoulder that ended with his untimely death. The proud face of his effigy enlightens the onlooker of his past abilities, conquering the Muslim leader, but never Jerusalem, of his travels far and wide beyond the shores of England, where he had not spent the majority of his life, but it had been a life of achievements, adventures, battles and confinement. Upon his return from the third crusade, he was captured and held for many months until his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine paid a vast ransom for his release.
There are other so-called graves in the abbey, all close together, effigies once adorned in colours of red and blue, now worn with age over the centuries. Lives that had been lived in the mists of time, of sadness, splendour, the high walls each side of the nave mainly bare of adornment, encompassing the stillness and stark beauty of the interior. The sun streaming gently through a window above, reflecting down softly upon the faces of a king, his queen, their effigies side by side. Eleanor of Aquitaine, an open book in her hands, is raised a little higher than her lord King, Henry II of England. He died nearby at Chinon, his life having been in turmoil at times, their family spread far and wide.
The walls echoed the silence and peace of the moments spent there and beside Richard was Isabella of Angouleme, wife of Richard's younger brother John, who finally became King of England but losing most of the Angevin empire before he died.
Beyond the vast nave are the cloisters, built around a simple garden where perhaps Eleanor of Aquitaine strolled from time to time, the quietness reflecting her ghost as she swept the length of them, her skirts brushing the simplicity of low plants growing there.
The sun now behind a cloud, the cloisters eerily empty of who went before, where once the nuns and Abbesses living here within the vast walls spread around from the church, were to be seen walking quietly to and from their various duties. Off one of the cloisters, an archway beautifully decorated with intricate carvings, lead to the Chapter House where wall paintings are to be seen.
A garden lay beyond the towering architecture of the kitchens to one side of the Abbey buildings, still growing a few vegetables and flowers, where a brace of workmen tended the end of summer beds. Two butterflies blundered into the garden border, alighting on the remaining lavender, their colours vivid as the sun appeared once again, warming the flight of a bee, swarming around the center of various flowers.
The vast complex of buildings was once a prison. Perhaps the inmates were never free to roam in the garden, never free of their bondage to feel the warmth of the sun on their faces, see the bees and butterflies fly freely in and out of the flowers, unfettered. Their lives had been harsh, cruel, unbearable.
But the Abbey of Fontevraud is tranquil now, where only visitors stroll, its simple beauty encompassing all who enter here, inspiring, captivating the imagination generated from within its walls, hidden in the depths of history for all who seek its origins, remembering its grandeur.
